[Sca-cooks] question about recipes

[Terry Decker]

Period gingerbread and lebkuchen were often pressed in a mold to add a 
decorative element.  The use of honey, sugar, a little flour and a lot of 
spices say to me this is a spice cake, a lebkuchen.

Springerle use eggs, flour and sugar and usually have some of chemical 
leaven, commonly hartshorn.  The traditional spicing for springerle is 
usually anise, dusted on the baking sheet rather than incorporated into the 
dough.

Bear


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "V O" <voztemp at yahoo.com>


Would the 1st recipe be funnel cake? And would the second one possibly be a
recipe that could be translated to be springerle? I know it says lebkuchen, 
but
with all of the stuff about dipping the mold into rosewater, letting them 
sit
overnight. To me it sound like springerle, describing molding the
caakes/cookies and letting them dry over night. The process of cooking is 
very
interesting, I may just have to try this with some of my molds next time.

from
Das Kuchbuch der Sabrina Welserin (1553)

Thanks,
Mirianna

163 To make Nürnberger Lebkuchen

Take one quart of honey, put it into a large pan, skim it well and let it 
boil a
good while. Put one and a half pounds of sugar into it and stir it 
continually
with a wooden spatula and let it cook for a while, as long as one cooks an 
egg,
pour it hot into a quarter pound of flour, stir it around slowly and put the
described spices in the dough, stir it around slowly and not too long; take 
one
and a half ounces of cinnamon sticks, one and a half ounces of nutmeg, three
fourths of an ounce of cloves, three ounces of ginger, a pinch of mace, and 
chop
or grind each one separately so that they are not too small, the cinnamon
sticks, especially, should be coarsely ground. And when you have put the 
spices
in the dough, then let the dough set for as long as one needs to hard boil 
eggs.
Dip the hands in flour and take a small heap of dough, make balls out of it,
weigh them so that one is as heavy as the others, roll them out with a 
rolling
pin, and spread them out smoothly by hand, the smoother the prettier. After 
that
dip the mold in rose water and open it up. Take four ounces of dough for one
Lebkuchen. Be careful and get no flour in the molds or else they will be no
good, but on the board you can put flour so that they do not stick to it. 
Let
them set overnight. And when you take them to the baker, then see to it that 
you
have another board that is thoroughly sprinkled with flour, so that it is 
very
thickly covered. Put the board with its covering of flour into the oven so 
that
the board is completely heated, the hotter the better. Take it out 
afterwards
and lay the Lebkuchen on top, so that none touches the other, put them in 
the
oven, let them bake and look after them frequently. At first they will 
become
soft as fat. If you take hold of them you can feel it well. And when they 
become
entirely dry, then take them out and turn the board around, so that the 
front
part goes into the back of the oven. Let it remain a short while, then take 
it
out. Take a small broom, brush the flour cleanly away from the underside of 
the
Lebkuchen and lay the Lebkuchen, in the mean time, on the other board, until 
you
have brushed off the Lebkuchen, one after the other, so that there is no 
more
flour on the bottoms. Afterwards sweep the flour very cleanly from off the
board. Lay the Lebkuchen on top of it again, so that the bottom is turned to 
the
top. Take a bath sponge, dip it in rose water, squeeze it out again, wash 
the
flour from the bottoms of the Lebkuchen. Be careful that you do not leave 
any
water on the board, then they would stick to it. Afterwards put the board 
with
the Lebkuchen again in the oven, until the bottoms rise nicely and become 
hard,
then take the board out again. See to it that two or three [people] are by 
the
board, who can quickly turn the Lebkuchen over, or else they will stick.
Afterwards take rose water and wash them on top with it as you have done on 
the
underside. Put them in the oven again, let them become dry, carry them home 
and
move them around on the board, so that they do not stick. And when they have
completely cooled, then lay them eight or ten, one upon the other, wrap them 
in
paper and store them in a dry place, see that no draft comes therein, then 
they
remain crisp.



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