A beautiful cookbook 1559
As Grisons cookbook or a beautiful cookbook is an early modern manuscript with 515 received recipes for preparing food , wine and medicine respectively. Based on the dates and the linguistic form, it was created between 1559 and the first quarter of the 17th century. Its oldest part was created like a cookbook from 1581 in the Bavarian region used by the Stockalpers in Brig, which results from the linguistic indications and the watermarks of the paper used, and came with the texts from Hand 1 and 2 sometime after 1559, but certainly still before 1608, to Chur and is therefore by no means the oldest German-language cookbook in Switzerland, as the subtitle of the only edition from 2018 to date claims.
Discovery and Publication
Presumably in the first half of the 20th century, the book came into the hands of a Chur family as a gift, who repeatedly had representatives of the clergy to visit. From there it was inherited in a suburb of Zurich. It was found while clearing an attic in the winter of 2014/2015 and it is only thanks to chance that it was kept and not disposed of with other old books. The finder gave it to the Zolliker historian Walter Letsch, whom she knew from school and who she knew would be interested in it. Walter Letsch transcribed the 515 recipes and translated them into today's German, with the support of Hans-Peter Schifferle, the editor-in-chief of the Swiss Idiotikon . The cookbook is stored in the Graubünden State Archives under the signature StAGR NH2. It is currently (2019) being restored.
description
The book measures 21 × 15 centimeters and is 3 centimeters thick. Originally it comprised 344 pages on 172 sheets, today there are 155 sheets. Sheets 50 to 66 are missing. The lower part of sheet 30 and sheet 31 were cut out. Since the following three pages contain medical prescriptions, it is conceivable that the separated sections also contained medical prescriptions and were cut out for use.
The book is bound in parchment with deerskin straps ; the back is missing. Puncture marks on the lids indicate that they were sewn to the back. The insides of the covers are covered with written paper that is no longer required. The front flyleaf contains parts of a recipe and comes from the same hand as most of the book. The back sheet comes from another scribe and can no longer be deciphered. The book could be tied with the two 30 centimeter long and 1 centimeter wide leather straps.
author
On the basis of the typeface and characteristic formulations, five writing hands are distinguished:
- Hand 1: Recipes 1 - 116
- Hand 2: Recipes 117-122
- Hand 3: Recipes 123-132 (Medicines)
- Hand 4: Recipes 133-146
- Hand 5: Recipes 147-515
With authors 1 and 3, the titles usually consist of a dish, followed by "zu" and a verb in the infinitive: to make Kelber sausage , to boil partridge , to yellow food . Writer 1 usually begins his instructions with "Wildu ..." : ("Do you want to canned ducks ..."). Writer 2 writes How to do ... in the title . His recipes all begin with Nemmet : («Take nice fresh orange peel…») He is also the only author who tried to use artistic initials, initial letters and curved descenders in the text of the titles . The writers 3 and 4 do not follow a regular formulation; often the dish is simply stated: roasted pike livers , carp filled or Enis (aniseed) bread rolls . Hand 5 often writes es / dis is / I have it brobiert compared to the usual evaluation .
With the writer of the first 116 recipes, the New High German diphthongization is complete; while it differs graphically between ei for from ¥ newly formed Zwielaut (z. B. Schneidt <cut>, setting <white>) and ai for the older diphthong Middle High German ei , Old High German ai z (. B. ain <a>, klain < small ›, Air ‹Eier›). There are also many cases of rounding off , for example rier ‹ stir ›, dinnen ‹thin›, lechlin ‹little holes› as well as some reversed spellings such as hóchten ‹Hechten› or Húrn ‹ hirn ›. The New High German monophthonging is not taken into account. Spellings like khalt ‹kalt›, dickh ‹dick›, gehagkht ‹ gehackt › could indicate an affricted pronunciation of old k . Often also p for Middle High German b , so pindt ‹ bindet ›, pradten ‹ braten › or pirckhen ‹ birken ›. All in all, these and other features suggest a clerk from the Bavarian region.
There are also numerous marginal notes, probably added later and in part by other scribes.
Origin and age
Letsch's edition asserts that the book comes from the kitchen of the episcopal castle, with the following arguments:
- Occasionally there are masses that were only used in Chur: 80 Churer mas most , Nim zu Kurer Viertel win the following thing .
- Individual dishes such as salsiz or Schüblig can be assigned to eastern Switzerland , while others such as mortadella , biscottini or chestnuts come from northern Italy. Family names like Scandolera or Puntisella refer to the southern Grisons region.
- The dishes described, and especially the expensive spices, show that this cannot be a recipe book for home cooking.
- The small number of recipes for game shows that it does not come from a noble household. Fish dishes, on the other hand, are of great importance because the fasting rules had to be observed.
- Much of the text is written in Swiss dialect. Words with the typical Grisons ending-a appear again and again, such as Bölla (onions), Duba (dove), Kela ( ladle ), Kestana (chestnuts), Schüssla (bowl), fülla (fill), gwürflata (diced) bacon or iserna (iron) lid.
Ursula Brunold-Bigler puts these arguments into perspective and, on the other hand, points to the recipes contained in the collection that, on the one hand, have a beneficial effect on male potency and, on the other, should serve to strengthen downcast women. All of this points to an origin not from a clerical, but from the Chur upper class milieu.
The title - probably written by hand 1 - names 1559 as the year of creation. The year 1608 is also given on sheet 32. The entries for hands 4 and 5 may have been made a little later.
Recipes
The cookbook includes recipes for various dishes such as stuffed carp, lamb with onion sauce, sausage, sauerbraten, Rehkopf, canned young birds, roasted beaver tail or a pie from lampreys to a sauce of fish blood and red wine. There are also various sweets, but also recipes to improve wine and from the medical field against ailments such as fever, constipation, gout, epilepsy, plague or headaches, such as recipe 122:
«For then you have wee und krannckheitt Nemmett Cleine white turnips Jſopp and Raůttenn all toast together jnn a knife n and ſ Ein by one ůaůberenn thůechel the juice aůßgetrůckh, and it helps to the sick date of course."
"For headaches and illness, take small white turnips , hyssop and lozenges , crush everything together in a mortar and squeeze the juice out of it through a clean towel, give the sick person to drink, it certainly helps, probatum est ."
There are no recipes with potatoes and corn; they only became known in Switzerland in the second half of the 18th century. Different types of grain, puree and bread were important. There are only a few recipes for vegetables. Berries and fruits, on the other hand, were of great importance, and recipes with quinces are often described. A variety of spices and over eighty different ingredients are mentioned. Usually they are garden herbs, but also expensive exotic spices such as nutmeg , ginger or cloves . Quantities are labeled differently depending on the recipe and often leave a lot of leeway for interpretation: "Take as much as you need" or "Don't take too much". Every now and then, cooking skills are required: "If you want to make a bird in pâté, make pate".
The recipes are neither structured according to subject area nor numbered. Sheet 144 is followed by a ten-page table of contents, which, however, is not complete.
- Recipe examples
Recipe 99
Make a gůet of veal lůngen zů
Wiltů ain gůet gepachens of veal lůngen
, haackh ſy klain, take it off with ſaltz,
wůrz Ymber, pfeffer, ſaffran, iiij Air dotter
aůf ain lůngen, hacker dars wol
durchsainannd ... make a daig with white
mel, the nit zů dinn or zů dickh ſey. Welger
die kůglein darinn, throw in bủttern, let
ſýe bachen, throw Zůgger daraůf. ſodů ſie dresserſt
ſo hastů ain gůet gebaches.
Recipe 137
Gebratne pike livers
Nim etlich shöne livers of large dive,
brat them fine lenient in oil or butter,
Spickh they dan with Zimet and Negeli,
make a brüeh v on small capers
geüß them about it, it is a delicately
ESSN then one king and princes like to give.
literature
- Walter Letsch: A beautiful cookbook 1559. The oldest German-language cookbook in Switzerland . Ed .: State Archive Graubünden (= sources and research on the history of Graubünden . No. 36 ). Desertina, Chur 2018, ISBN 978-3-85637-502-7 .
- Ursula Brunold-Bigler: A beautiful cookbook 1559. Critical comments on an edition . Self-published, Chur 2020.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ursula Brunold-Bigler, A beautiful cookbook 1559. Critical comments on an edition. Chur 2020, p. 6f.
- ↑ Ursula Brunold-Bigler, A beautiful cookbook 1559. Critical comments on an edition. Chur 2020, pp. 9–12.
- ↑ Ursula Brunold-Bigler, A beautiful cookbook 1559. Critical comments on an edition. Chur 2020, p. 4.