[Sca-cooks] Translation and BBQ Type Questions - German

[Susan Fox-Davis]

Barbara Benson wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>I am deep in the throes of teaching myself Renaissance German, and I
>must say it isn't going too badly. But I do get stuck, and I am at
>that point right now. First off here is the transcription and my
>preliminary translation from the chapter on Swine Wild Caught:
>
>27. Ungerische Braten an einem ha(b)len Spie(b) gebraten/ sonderlich
>die Ruckbraten/ mit Salk und Knobloch gerieben/ darnach mit dem
>Spie(b) in Rauch gehenckt/ unnd ein stundt oder zwo hengen lassen/
>geschwindt hinweg gebraten/ und zum ersten gang auff die Bruh gelegt.
>
>27. Hungarian Roast on a Hazel Spit Roasted/ especially the Rump Roast
>(?)/ with salt and garlic rubbed/ thereafter with the Spit a smoke (?)
>cooked (?)/ and let it hang for an hour or two/ take it (the spit)
>away from the roast/ and for the first course arrange it with broth.
>
Mmmm, medieval carnitas!

>The obvious words that I am having difficulties with are Ruckbraten,
>Rauch and gehenckt. Any thoughts on those would be greatly
>appreciated.
>
Using the Google.com and Regar.de language tools:

Ruckbraten = Jerk Roast  ??!
Ruck = flip, tug, jolt.
Rauch = Smoke
gehenckt = This one is tough and needs some dissection and good guessing.   Henkel = Handle, gehen[c]kt would be something that has a handle, so your interpretation of "spit" may not be far off the mark.  


>The second question is for those BBQ and open fire cookers out there.
>In trying to figure out how I would scale this up for a feast (and
>actual spit roasting will not be possible in this situation) I was
>considering a couple of options - both of which would involve needing
>to get my hands on Hazel Wood.
>
>One would be if I could get some small Hazel skewers. I thought if I
>skewered them into the roasts and then cooked them on the grill with
>relatively indirect heat then it would give whatever flavor that the
>Hazel spit would.
>
>The second idea was if I could get some Hazel wood chips like you use
>in a smoker, soak them, and put them in a pan on the coals. This would
>give a more smoking effect - but I think it might give an
>approximation.
>
Unless you know someone with a hazelnut tree, I would not expect to be 
able to find this.  But I've just had a brainstorm - I bet hazel 
nutshells would work just fine!  Fresh nuts are in the stores for the 
holidays so get cracking now or find a friendly nut farmer/handler that 
would love to give them away.  If you get lazy and decide to just throw 
the whole nuts into the smoking pan, for the love of pete CRACK THEM 
FIRST or you will have many tiny explosions on your hands.  Hazelnut 
shell shards at high velocity could be painful.

Selene