[Sca-cooks] Roux in the Transylvanian Cookbook

[Terry]

As appears in The Science of Cooking and related footnote:


"(162) Goose with German sauce.

Do the same until the boiling; when boiling, add parsley roots. Fry 
onion and flour in
butter 99, and when it’s time, add saffron, black pepper and ginger, and 
serve it when you must.


99 German sauce appears to be one of the few examples of an actual roux 
in medieval cooking."


It is interesting to note that "German sauce" is a variant of "Yellow 
sauce" from Sabina Welser's cookbook.


*"5 How to cook a wild boar's head, also how to prepare a sauce for it. *

A wild boar's head should be boiled well in water and, when it is done, 
laid on a grate and basted with wine, then it will be thought to have 
been cooked in wine. Afterwards make a black or yellow sauce with it. 
First, when you would make a black sauce, you should heat up a little 
fat and brown a small spoonful of wheat flour in the fat and after that 
put good wine into it and good cherry syrup, so that it becomes black, 
and sugar, ginger, pepper, cloves and cinnamon, grapes, raisins and 
finely chopped almonds. And taste it, however it seems good to you, make 
it so.


*6 If you would make a yellow sauce *

Then make it in the same way as the black sauce, only take saffron 
instead of the syrup and put no cloves therein, so you will also have a 
good sauce. "


Welser (1553) is the earliest use of a roux that I have encountered.  
I'm wondering, since the "Opus Magiricum Posthumum" included in The 
Science of Cooking is by Johannes Jacob Wecker, if the "German sauce" 
may not be from Anna Weckerin's cookbook (1597).  When I have some time, 
I may take a pass through Weckerin.


Bear