[Sca-cooks] Kalács

[Terry Decker]

I would not expect a recipe for kalács in The Science of Cooking.  Baking 
was a separate craft and, because it is easy to produce a loaf of bread, 
bakers tended to keep their recipes and methods within the craft.  That 
Rastons appear in the Harleian manuscripts is unusual, but it probably 
because it was seen as a dessert rather than a bread.

Braided breads show up in Germany in the 1400's including challah and there 
is no definitive evidence as to whether the practice originated with Gentile 
or Jewish bakers.  Doughs enriched with oil, milk and eggs predate the 
introduction of braiding.  Dresdener stollen, which has a sweet enriched 
dough made almost exactly the same way as kalács but usually isn't braided, 
is first referenced in the 15th Century.  I have not been able to ascertain 
whether this stollen had spices and fruit in it.  By the mid-16th Century 
bread recipes containing fruit and spices are appearing in Italy and England 
and were likely in use across Europe.  While I have no proof, I suspect 
German baking practices came into Hungary via the Transylvanian Saxon 
population.

A lot of the fritter and doughnut recipes resemble the multitude of bake 
goods that fall under the German "Krapfen."

Bear

The Marie Antoinette "quote" of "let them eat cake" is usually
rendered as "let them eat _kalács_" in Hungarian.

Regardless of the exact recipe, modern _kalács_ is very much like the
challah one can buy in some supermarkets: a slightly sweet bread,
light yet substantial (due to the egg content), with or without
raisins, but no spices. The modern form is most often braided, but the
etymological dictionary indicates that it was probably originally
round or toric, being based on a Slavic word derived from "wheel".

The Transylvanian etymological dictionary (the one with actual
citations in it) has among others: 1594 "on Easter day they owe the
ispan [roughly "bailiff"] a gift of two or three eggs and one kalach
each if someone cannot give a kalach he gives one piece of bread. On
St. Martin's day they give two coins each and one kalach."

I have not found a recipe resembling kalács in the Science of Cooking.

(There are recipes that sound remarkably like strudel, along with all
sorts of variations on fritters/donuts -- things involving batter and
frying in butter.)

Julia
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