Historical Cooking, Week 8

speccoll

Thursday 1 December 2016

This week Sean attempts to make an apple-based dish from our recipe book – the complete manuscript is available for viewing on our Digital Collections Portal

As temperatures have taken a tumble over the past couple of weeks, we thought it would be a good idea to attempt a winter warmer from our manuscript of recipes this time round.

“Gefüllete äpffel durch die Rüebhächlen” seemed to fit the bill – the recipe is short and sweet in more ways than one, essentially being a kind of baked apple.

Gefüllete äpffel durch die Rüebhächlen – Apples filled with [grated apple]

The ingredients are mostly straight forward and easily obtainable:

The first step is:

Hawe die äpffel auf vnd bshneide sie, dan gehächlet, dasein gute blaten voll gibt

Core the apples and cut them up, then [grate them], so that you have a good bowl full

dan bach sie im ancken, bis sie shön gälb warden

then cook them in butter until they are nice and yellow

dan thue sie in ein blatn, daran ein glas vol wein, zucker, zimet, rosinli, Roswasser, Koch alleβ vndereinandern, dan aufgestelt.

then put them in a bowl, add a glass of wine, sugar, cinnamon, raisins, rosewater, cook everything together, then serve.

It is at this point that the recipe became a little confusing. Isn’t the name of the recipe ‘Apple filled with grated apple?’ Where do the filled apples come in? This wasn’t clear, so reading between the lines (or making things up on the fly, depending on your perspective) the grated apple was used to fill a further apple.

A liberal quantity of wine, raisins and spices (sorry, no rosewater knocking about in the kitchen) were added to the baking dish with the apple mixture, and the whole lot was covered with tin foil, ready to bake.

It was baked at a medium heat until the apple was cooked through. The grated apple and wine mixture had cooked together and gave the dish a rich, almost caramelised taste.

The final verdict: this is not the most Instagram-worthy meal – but it is a hearty and warm dessert which goes down a treat when the evenings are drawing in and you could use a little comfort food.

Sean Rippington

Digital Archives Officer