[Sca-cooks] Another question on peas

[Terry Decker]

A cookbook I've been seeking for a long time.  If you have a complete copy, 
perhaps you could solve a problem I have when you have time.

About 20 years ago, I obtained a copy of Esther B. Aresty's The Delectable 
Past.  Aresty commnets that Wecker's work contains a recipe that "bore a 
close resembelance to Rösti".  She then procedes to provide a modern recipe 
for Rösti.  Rösti is a dish using Solanum tuberosum, the white or Irish 
potato, which, at the time Wecker was published, was just entering Northern 
Europe as botanical specimens.  If Wecker has a recipe for potatoes 
(Kartoffel, Taratouphli, Erdapfel, etc.) then it suggests that potatoes may 
have been more widespread than the records suggest.  If you come across such 
a recipe, please post it to the list, I and some others would certainly be 
interested in seeing it.

Many thanks.

Bear

----- Original Message ----- 

Ein Köstlich neu Kochbuch (1598) by Anna Wecker (or Weckerin) - which is
apparently the first printed cookbook with a woman author (the earlier
women's cookbooks are manuscripts).  She was the wife of a physician and
in the court of Pflazgraf of Rheinland - I suspect she was quite learned
and am peripherally interested in identifying her source of knowledge for
her medical advice, but primarily focused on the food and recipes at this
point.  I am only a few months into the project and trying to develop the
specialized vocabulary.  So far the recipe amounts are mostly single dish,
and is written in a type of grandmotherly stream-of-consciousness sort of
way.  So far I have done the table of contents of part 1 and 2, have been
excited about fritters, funnel cakes, proto-baumkuchen and quark.  Current
work is to identify, number and more or less name each recipe.

The baumkuchen queries based on an instruction for "heidenische teig" took
me on a road that led me to read Ryff's section on grains and beans.  And
thus, I want to know more!  I'm trying to sort out in my mind the
different type of grains used in baking for one, along with some of the
words being regionally specific and subject to variant spelling.  In my
head I told myself I needed to go back and get a grounding in the basics
to help this attempt at understanding the nature of the ingredients.  It
has been a great deal of fun.

I've been blogging about it here:

http://jillwheezul.livejournal.com/tag/weckerin
http://jillwheezul.livejournal.com/tag/baumkuchen

Katrine