SIX
Openly criticizing the Roman Church, which exploited fears of the afterlife through images of Hell and Purgatory to promote the sale of indulgences, Martin Luther, together with like-minded innovators in the early sixteenth century, kicked off a storm whose effects are clearly discernable to this day. At the time the scholarly language was still Latin, and the majority of the population of Europe was illiterate, although the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw a boom in university foundations. Studying, however, was still extremely expensive. During the three years of his son’s university education in Vienna and Cologne in the 1390s, the wealthy Cologne businessman Hermann von Goch spent over half as much on his son’s studies as he did on food for his large household.1 Then as now, cookbooks weren’t written by scholars, but the group they initially targeted and whose food habits they reflect was small. In Augsburg, for instance, the proud and well-off patrician families made up less than one-tenth of the city’s population. Martin Luther not only insisted on a common German language, shaped by his translation of the Bible, but pushed the radical idea of elementary schooling. As Johann Gutenberg’s printing technology made books more affordable, literacy became more common. With their own, Lutheran Protestant confession and language, Germans finally started to feel their way towards their own cultural identity, including the way they cooked and ate. Cookbooks were among the most popular reading material.
For Luther the Bible was the basis of holy authority: if God had made a world that included humble everyday work, good food, wine, beer and women, the duty of a good Christian was to show moderation in all things rather than indulge in extremes of fasting, or of abstinence and celibacy. The history of Stollen, the most traditional German Christmas cake (of which the Bremer Klaben is a close relative), contains the whole debate about religious food rules, sins and indulgences of that time. Looking at today’s recipe, heavy with butter, almonds and dried fruit, it is hard to believe that it originally started as a cake for the Advent fasting period before Christmas. Its shape symbolizes the infant Jesus in swaddling clothes, and it was first recorded in 1329 in Naumburg on the Saale near Leipzig. At that time the strict fasting rules allowed it to be made only from water, oats and the local rapeseed oil. However, from the mid-fifteenth century on dispensations from fasting laws became more common all over Europe. In the north this was often based on the reasoning that olive oil (which German speakers called Baumöl, literally tree oil) as a replacement for butter or lard was very expensive. In 1475 Pope Sixtus IV authorized the use of butter in Germany, Hungary and Bohemia during Advent for the following five years, although most sources in connection with Stollen quote a dispensation given in a Butterbrief or butter letter sent by Pope Innocent VIII to the Duke of Saxony in 1491.2 Both were by no means isolated cases but part of the regular sale of indulgences, often linked to the financing of concrete building projects, including the construction of the papal basilica of St Peter in Rome. Some historians think that this only put an official rubber stamp on everyday practice. Be that as it may, Stollen, the lean cake for the fasting period, developed into the familiar treat rich in fruit and almonds, and the most famous recipe today is undoubtedly the yeast-based one from Dresden/Saxony.3
True to form as an advocate for the secularization of monasteries, in 1525 Luther married the nun Katharina von Bora, and it was around their table that the famous Tischgespräche, table talks with students and colleagues, took place after plentiful but not overly luxurious meals. Die LutherinKatharina, or Käthe as her husband affectionately called her, ran the household in the former Augustin monastery of Wittenberg like a business venture, taking in students to make ends meet. She was responsible for beer brewing, beekeeping, care of the wine barrels in the cellar, overseeing work in the gardens, fields, pastures and orchards and the husbandry of the household’s cattle, pigs, goats and poultry. Käthe herself came from a moderately well-off local family of landed gentry. Contrary to common assumptions (and his own account), her husband had also been raised in a fairly affluent family. Luther’s father owned a copper mine in nearby Mansfeld. Recent archaeological excavations of the refuse dump behind his parents’ house shed fresh light on the family’s culinary habits, delivering a great variety of freshwater fish bones, including debris from pike, perch, eel and bream, besides herring and cod, which presumably was consumed in the form of stockfish – all pointing to a family prepared to spend more than was absolutely necessary on their food. Their kitchen was representative of this era’s households in small towns. A variety of pots and pans indicate that food preparation took many different forms. Implements include the characteristic northern German Grapen, a large three-legged Dutch oven which could be used to cook whole chickens or wild ducks, or closed with a pastry lid to thicken almond milk overnight in the embers. Shallow open pans of varying size made from iron or earthenware served to prepare different kinds of gruel, porridge, puréed vegetable or egg dishes. Smaller quantities of foodstuffs were baked in bowls; these, placed on a grid and covered with a large metal lid, were topped with glowing embers. A large metal kettle hung over the fire for boiling and stewing, and various spits were used for roasting, including small spits for the smaller varieties of wild bird.
Woodcuts used as illustrations in the earliest printed cookbooks show kitchens with a knee-high fireplace under a chimney: embers were moved to where they were needed according to the desired intensity of heat. Bellows were used to revive the fire in the morning. However, systems varied according to the region. In the southeast and in more modest houses open hearths were rarely used. Kitchens tended to be small, with a large stove in a separate soot-covered room next door forming the lower part of the chimney. This stove was used for cooking as well as heating the house, with pots and pans placed directly in the fire, and a separate warming compartment in the stove which could be accessed from the living room. Some stoves featured built-in water cisterns, which provided hot water as well as a boiling pot for cooking dumplings. The warmth of the stove was also useful for drying fruits and provided a warm place in which to rear chicks.4
Wooden tubs served to wash both dishes and foodstuffs in water fetched from a public well. Only wealthier households had their own wells and were sometimes equipped with elaborate pumping systems. Essential kitchen equipment included a bronze mortar for grinding salt, spices, almonds and so on, a finer consistency being achieved with a sieve and a cloth. Serving dishes, round and wide, were made of glazed earthenware, with separate smaller dishes for mustard and sauces. Small dessert plates were used to serve nuts and fruit after dinner. Earthen beakers and mugs, as well as glasses in similar shapes, served as drinking vessels.
Some of these stoves were still in use in the late 1960s in the Nuremberg area. The oven heats the living room, but is used for cooking from the kitchen side, with the smoke escaping into the open kitchen chimney.
In a middle-class household such as that of the Luthers, every dish was shared around the table. Serving was done quite literally by hand, as was eating, with the assistance of a personal knife and bits of bread for mopping up sauce. Spoons were only used for soup, stew or gruel and personal forks were still regarded as suspiciously close to the Devil’s pitchfork, with Luther ranting against the use of small forks, Gäbelchen (larger ones long having been accepted for serving purposes).
The Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation reinforced the cultural diversity in Germany. The connection between confessions and economics was complex but, simply put, the Protestant work ethic suited the capitalist instincts of a sober bourgeoisie which reinvested its profits, whereas Catholicism seemed to provide dispensation for the enjoyment of worldly goods, feasting and extravagance. However, in both camps the sense of duty towards those who were poor, elderly or otherwise in need was strong, since social responsibility was shifted from the Church to society at large. A good example is the Magdalenenhospital of Münster in Westphalia, the city’s oldest. It was founded in the eleventh century, initially under the control of the bishop. By the early years of the fourteenth century, however, it was run by the staunchly Catholic city fathers. Typically for such an institution, it had been endowed with several estates around Münster and was thus supplied from its own fields, gardens and farmyards. It housed and fed eighteen elderly people who were charged a fee, with fifteen more poor people accomodated for free. Until 1636, when the communal kitchen was closed and replaced by the distribution of money and food, everybody, including labourers and servants, were fed from a single kitchen, although paying inmates received slightly higher fish, meat and beer rations in some cases.
The hospital’s Küchenbücher, detailed kitchen accounts for the period from 1552 to 1636, give us a precise idea of daily provisions and meals.5 The diet followed the traditional Christian pattern of Friday as a designated lean day when less food was eaten, while every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday was meatless. Two main meals were served per day, with fish replacing meat on Fridays and on the eve of numerous holy days. Contrary to common assumption, most holy days required a reduction in quantity or in choice. Feasting only occurred at Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, Assumption, on two designated saints’ days and (until 1570) on Shrove Tuesday. This meant additional fish on the days before and an additional roasted meat dish for midday on the day itself, with the occasional luxury of expensive saffron included in boiled meat dishes.
Lucas Cranach, altar for the Mönchskirche/Salzwedel, Johann-Friedrich-Danneil-Museum Salzwedel. The painting shows a vineyard which on the left-hand side is ruined by Catholic mismanagement and overexploitation, while on the right-hand side the soberly clad Protestants are repairing the damage.
A culinary place in time: the Lutherhaus in Wittenberg
For a glimpse of the period, the Lutherhaus in Wittenberg in Saxony-Anhalt (1½ hrs by car southwest of Berlin) houses a museum on the history of the Reformation. Its historic rooms offer the experience of a relatively well-off household of the first half of the sixteenth century, including the hall where the famous table talks took place. A special exhibition focuses on Luther’s wife and her household management (www.martinluther.de/de/lutherhaus-wittenberg).
Quantities in general weren’t meagre. Meat consumption was high at around 100 kg per head per year. Since meat was considered more nourishing than other ingredients, no extra dishes were provided on meat days – that is, between 125 and 133 days annually. Veal was served from April to June; beef and pork, the dominant meat sources, were available fresh from October to December. Mutton was on the menu from June to October. Goose, in season in September and October, was reserved for festive meals, along with chicken. Fresh meat was mostly consumed at the midday meal. Evening meals consisted of salted, smoked or otherwise preserved forms of beef and pork, with the famous Westphalian ham a highlight of Sunday evening meals. Fresh meat was usually boiled, with pepper added for a dish called Potthast (known today as Dortmund Pfefferpotthast), while roasted veal or chicken were reserved for the six highest feast days of the year.
Fish came on the table on 90 to 100 days per year on average, always at midday, and mostly in the form of salted herring or Bückling, the same fish smoked. Stockfish was reserved for feast days and Sundays. Fresh fish was even more expensive and only purchased for the councillors’ annual banquets. Portions were 100 to 200 g – markedly smaller portions than meat. This was undoubtedly due to the fact that it had to be bought in, whereas most of the meat came from the hospital’s own production. As fish prices began to rise from 1580 on, portions were reduced even further and were occasionally replaced by cheese. Side dishes, often based on pulses, were considered a necessity when fish was on the menu, as fish was deemed less nourishing than meat.
Midday meals on fast days consisted of bread, cheese and vegetables, the evening meal being limited to a small white loaf, Pfennigswegge or Muiterwegge, both of which were schonebrot, literally ‘nice bread’, that is, from more finely ground, sifted flour. Ordinary bread was unsalted wholemeal rye bread. More refined rye bread flavoured with caraway seeds and wheat bread made by a commercial baker using the hospital’s own grain were both reserved for special occasions and fast days. Porridge and gruel played a lesser role and were made from barley.
Fasting rules relaxed with time and were officially lifted by the hospital in 1634, a move that is also documented for other institutions in Münster at the time. This might partly have been due to the rising prices of foodstuffs in the context of the Thirty Years War, but possibly also to the impact of Luther’s ideas. Until then no animal products except eggs had been consumed during Lent, making for a monotonous diet consisting mainly of pulses and bread, with small amounts of dried figs as an occasional treat, along with vegetable oils, probably from rapeseed and local nuts. Cheese was dispensed twice a week on meatless and fishless days, with butter distributed in weekly rations. About half the cheese consumed came from the hospital’s own production; the other half was Friesian hard cheese and had to be paid for. The weekly rations of the latter alone were 340–600 g per person. As with fish, purchases of cheese dimished as prices rose and it was often replaced by the more affordable bread.
Bread baking in the city, 1716.
Münster belonged to the beer-drinking north: the everyday beverage at the hospital was a light hopped beer from the hospital’s own brewery, made with barley malt, of which everybody drank between 2 and 3 litres a day. Purchased stronger Vollbier was distributed on festive days, whereas wine was reserved for the four highest religious feast days, and consumption averaged only 2.8 litres per person per year.
Meanwhile, Germans might have lagged behind their neighbours in terms of food trends, but they were still eager to write down culinary instructions. Culinary manuals were among the earliest printed books in Germany, and more have been preserved than in any other language. When evaluating their impact, it is useful to trace the evolution of the cookbook in Germany from the earliest times. As pointed out earlier, recipe collections initially reflected aristocratic and upper-bourgeois lifestyles and were produced by and intended for those who could afford a cook and a scribe. Professional cooks working in wealthy households appear to have been exclusively male. However, women joined the chorus relatively early in Germany, even though they were not supposed to deal with public affairs or become involved in decisions which did not directly concern the home.
In addition to Daz Buoch from around 1350 and its Low German predecessor examined earlier, there were a number of other manuscripts that included recipe collections, such as Mondseer Kochbuch and Kochbuch des Dorotheenklosters, both from the first half of the fifteenth century. Many were based on Daz Buoch, including Reichenauer Kochbuch and another version, probably copied some years later from the same original, Alemannisches Büchlein von guter Speise. Kochbuch des Meister Eberhard, like these two from the first half of the fifteenth century, was the first by a professional author, the Küchenmeister, kitchen master or head chef of the duke of Bavaria-Landshut. Like its predecessors it offered dietary advice, including a large section copied from Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica. A few years later, in 1460, Eberhard’s colleague Meister Hans, he of the saffron rhyme discussed earlier, left a similar but even more extensive collection.
While the dining table represented a fundamental means of demonstrating status, the household manual became a way of committing to posterity a record of the privileges of wealth, as in the case of Ulrich Schwarz, an Augsburg guild mayor and merchant who became wealthy through trading in wine and salt. He not only wrote a household book, but included in it a recipe collection.6 Schwarz seems to have been an exceptionally ambitious politician, a reformer who aimed to increase representation among all classes and groups, but also eagerly furthered his own social aspirations. His clothes were ostentatious; his political decisions provocative. He appears to have written his household book during the 1460s. It is a combination of advice and information on the proper conduct of a household’s daily routines, inside and out. After his death the work was passed down within the family, and entries were added by subsequent generations. Whereas Michael de Leone, the pronotary in Würzburg and author of Daz Buoch, had been interested in literature and poetry, Schwarz’s interests were more practical. He noted down volume measures in use in different cities and rules governing the weather, and recorded political events and medical recommendations. His 137 recipes clearly show his social ambitions, culminating in the description of how to prepare ‘good Westphalian pig’s meat called ham’ from a whole fattened pig.
Women are more prominent among cookery writers in Germany than they are in other countries. However they stuck to writing by hand even at a time when printing had become quite widespread, probably seeing their works as aides-mémoires intended for family use. The recipe collection of Philippine Welser from around 1545 was part of the dowry of the young bride from a wealthy Augsburg family (close competitors of the Fuggers) who secretly married the archduke of Tyrol in Innsbruck. The collection of Sabine Welser (probably from the same family) of 1553 reflects a similar (quite modern) combination of robustness, using local ingredients, but also taking imported luxurious ones for granted. Its specialities are Pasteten and Torten, pies and tarts, with a very liberal use of sugar, which many still regarded as a medicine rather than a sweetener. Here is her recipe for a strawberry tart:
Ain erbertorten zu machen:
Mach das bedellin vnnd lass erstarcken jn der tortenpfanen. Darnach nim die erber vnnd legs darauf vmber aufs allernechst zusamen, darnach zuckeres woll aufs allerbast, lass darnach ain klein weil bachen, geuss ain maluasier darauf vmber vnnd lass ain weil bachen, so jst er gemacht.
To make a strawberry tart
Make the base and let it go cold in the pan. Then take the strawberries and put them on it tightly, then sugar it very well, let it bake a little while, pour some malvasia over it and let it bake a little while, then it’s done.
Her recipe for puréed figs has some interesting aspects:
Ain feigenmusss zu machen:
Thu ein wein jn ain heffellin, vnnd wan er sieden wirt, so thu geriben lezelten vnnd geriben semel daran. Saffera, mandel, weinber, feigen thu darein vnnd ain wenig ain schmaltz.7
To make a fig purée:
Put some wine in a pan, and when it starts to boil, add some grated gingerbread and some grated roll. Add saffron, almonds, raisins, figs and a little lard.
Lard, in the south of Germany, would have been drawn (clarified) butter, but even more telling and worth a short glance is the gingerbread Sabine Welser used and whose production was (and is) centred in Nuremberg. Early recipes for it listed only honey, flour and spices as ingredients along with a raising agent such as potash or Hirschhornsalz (ammonium carbonate). The Zeidler, beekeepers, provided honey from bees in the surrounding forest, later supplemented by the products of Germany’s first sugar refinery, founded in 1573 in Augsburg. The Lebküchnermeister, gingerbread bakers, formed their own guild in 1643, while wealthy patrician families had long begun to demand richer versions that included almonds, nuts and eggs. The culmination of this trend was a particularly rich version, Elisen-Lebkuchen, supposedly named after a guild master’s pretty daughter (to legally qualify for the title today, the mix must contain at least 25 per cent almonds or other nuts and no more than 10 per cent flour). The name Lebkuchen itself does not, as might be supposed, derive from Leben, life, or laben, feasting, but most probably has its roots in the Latin libum, a flatbread or sacrificial cake whose origins can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia. In its various shapes it has always been something celebratory, a sweetened version of normal everyday bread, but its preparation was never confined to specific feast days or a particular season. Monasteries preserved such recipes from the earliest times, since their pharmacies kept the necessary spices in stock, a convenience which also gave rise to several versions spread on wafers to prevent drying out. Besides Nuremberg, Germany’s gingerbread tradition is based in Pulsnitz, northeast of Dresden/Saxony. In 1558 Pulsnitz bakeries received permission to bake Pfefferkuchen, literally peppercakes, leading to the evolution of an independent craft practised by small family companies to this day. The region was never rich, so the classic Pulsnitz Pfefferkuchenare still far more austere than the gingerbreads of Nuremberg, where the rival product is somewhat disparagingly known as braune Ware, brown stuff. Whereas Nuremberg’s far richer Lebkuchen today are strictly associated with Christmas (although industrial manufacturers inundate the shelves with their wares as soon as summer is fading), Pulsnitzer Pfefferkuchen are produced all year round and are traditionally also given as presents on special occasions such as birthdays, graduations and so forth. Pulsnitz peppercakes are made by heating honey and/or syrup and kneading it into a mix of wheat and rye flour till it forms a thick dough. This is then matured in wooden barrels in a cool place for several weeks – or even months, depending on the recipe. It is then ‘broken’ in a special machine and mixed with spices and a raising agent – ammonium carbonate or potash – after which almonds, nuts and candied citrus-peel may be added for special kinds of Pfefferkuchen before baking. The Pulsnitz mix never includes eggs or fat of any kind, and presumably it is this type of Lezelten that recipes like Sabine Welser’s call for.
Her home town Augsburg was, as we have seen, a city of rich Catholic gourmets with close links to Italy. The first German translation of Bartolomeo Sacchi’s (commonly called Platina) De honesta voluptate was published here in 1554 under the title Von der Eerlichen ziemlichen auch erlaubten wollust des Leibes. Platina’s work, the first cookbook to appear in print, around 1474, introduced the new, more restrained cooking style of the Renaissance, with minimal use of spices and less processing of basic foodstuffs. In contrast Germany’s first printed cookbook, the Kuchemaistrey, was a rather modest compendium and still in the medieval tradition. It appeared in Nuremberg in 1485 and was hugely successful, with many new editions until 1674. The recipes do not differ much from earlier handwritten manuscripts, and the connection between humoral medicine, health, cooking and diet is still strong. Anna Weckerin’s Ein Köstlich New Kochbuch (Amberg, 1597), the first printed cookbook by a woman, featured dishes for the poor and sick, possibly because of the fact that Weckerin was the widow of a Basel physician.
Title page of Rumpolt’s cookbook from 1581. Note the cook’s sturdiness; he is hardworking, but also well fed.
The first professional German cook to share his knowledge in a printed and thus more widely distributed book was Marx Rumpolt. His Ein New Kochbuch (A New Cookbook) was first published in 1581 by Sigmundt Feyerabendt. It has numerous vignettes and woodcuts by artists highly regarded in their time, such as Weiditz, Jost Amman and Solis, in the sixteenth-century equivalent of modern full-colour, glossy printing. In spite of the high price that the book presumably commanded, it was reprinted at least four times, in 1582, 1586, 1587 and 1604. Rumpolt’s nearly 500-page work is the first true cookbook published in Germany, as opposed to a mere collection of recipes; a guide for professionals written by a professional. It covered instructions on staging banquets for members of different social classes, detailed the correct seating order, advised on servants and provided extensive tips on shopping. It also included many menus for the emperor, kings, electors, archdukes, counts, noblemen, burgher and peasants, each with an alternative for meatless days. The higher the rank, the more dishes were served, with meals ranging from six to twenty or 30 dishes per setting. Here is a midday meal on a fast day for a peasants’ banquet. In contrast, the imperial menu for the same occasion had 42 dishes for one course, not to mention the difference in ingredients and effort.
The first course . . . a pea soup, boiled eggs. The other course . . . blue boiled carp with vinegar. The third course . . . a sauerkraut cooked with lean salmon and baked fish and roast fish on the cabbage, all served in one bowl. The fourth course . . . Yellow pike boiled the Hungarian way. The fifth course . . . a white jelly made from sour carp. The sixth course . . . all kinds of baked, cake and wafers . . . apple, pears, nuts and cheese, all served in one bowl.8
Approximately 2,000 systematically arranged recipes were followed by detailed instructions on winemaking. Rumpolt’s work is still very much in the spirit of the Middle Ages, but the simple act of writing down and printing professional recipes made him a daring reformer: Rumpolt was the first cook in Germany to break the unwritten rule of the chefs’ guild to protect their knowledge by passing it on only through word of mouth in professional kitchens. Despite Rumpolt’s historical importance, frustratingly little is known about his life besides the date of publication of Ein New Kochbuch. However, careful reading provides a good idea about the man behind the book. At the time of writing he was the personal chef of the elector and archbishop of Mainz, who resided in Aschaffenburg (which belonged to the diocese of Mainz). He was Hungarian by birth, but his forefathers were driven out of the ‘kleine Walachei’ (today part of western Romania) by ‘the cruel and brutish arch-enemy of Christianity, the Turk’. Obliged to travel far and wide, ‘from youth onwards to subsist among strangers, concerned as to how I would be able today or tomorrow to maintain a livelihood’, he was unable to learn any foreign language, but devoted himself to cookery, ‘with great effort and work . . . for many years now’, suggesting that by 1581 he was no longer a young man. He seems to have been personal chef to the court of Saxony and possibly also to the Holy Roman Emperor, a Habsburg. He reports to have been ‘at many lords’ courts and have seen and heard a bit of Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Prussia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Austria and Germany’; in short, a cosmopolitan self-made man in a period when this was exceptional. His insistence that he had tested everything he wrote down is worth taking note of, as it indirectly accused colleagues of merely copying from earlier works:
Because as far as I am concerned I can testify with a good conscience that I have managed to excellently present to others and to communicate in the most beneficial way what I have understood and learned. And have not borrowed from other books and falsified what I have described here, but have made and arranged it all with my own hand at the masters’ courts where I served.
Sigmundt Feyerabendt, the publisher of Ein New Kochbuch, was astute at publishing ‘bestsellers’. Although Rumpolt sought to protect his work from unauthorized reprinting for a decade by a Holy Roman Privilege, by 1581 Feyerabendt himself had published a virtual copy of Rumpolt’s work under the (widely used) title Kochund Kellermeystery, attributing authorship to a certain Meister N. Sebastian. Publishers of the time certainly weren’t afraid to take liberties. When the Latin version of Platina was printed in Cologne in 1529 and proved to be very successful, a publisher decided to combine two bestsellers by putting Platina’s name on a reprint of the (anonymous) Kuchemaisterey. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this abridged version of Rumpolt’s work (the chapter on winemaking was reprinted almost word for word) was published with his knowledge and approval; a cheaper edition was made available for the less well-off after the expensive ‘coffee-table’ one had been popularized.
Posterity has barely acknowledged Rumpolt’s achievement: in contrast to Sigmundt Feyerabendt, there is no entry under his name in the relevant reference works, nor is his New Kochbuch listed as one of Feyerabendt’s publications. However, crediting Rumpolt with the first German potato recipe, as has generally been the case (also by this author), seems to be a mistake resulting from the recipe’s title, Erdtepffel, literally earth-apples, the common southern German designation for potatoes (Kartoffeln in High German).
Peel and cut them up, let them swell in water and squeeze them well in a cloth, chop them up and roast them in finely cut bacon. Put a little milk with it and let them cook in it, so it will be good and tasty.9
It is highly improbable that Rumpolt would have known potatoes. They had reached Spain as part of the Columbian Exchange in the mid-1560s at the very earliest, were very slow to spread and as a foodstuff were regarded with suspicion. If he did, he would have referred to them differently, as the word Erdtepffel at the time designated a chervil-like plant today called Kerbelrüben (Bunium or Chaerophyllum bulbocastanum), which had cumin-like seeds and tuberous roots whose taste was often compared to chestnuts (more about potatoes will follow in the next chapter).10
In 1594, shortly after the publication of Rumpolt’s work, Frantz de Rontzier’s Kunstbuch von mancherley Essen (The Artbook of Various Dishes), was published in Wolfenbüttel/Lower Saxony. The author, personal chef to the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, recorded his recipes by dictating in the Lower German vernacular to a scribe who translated his words into High German. The result is somewhat less structured and convincing than Rumpolt’s and was certainly less commercially successful, an indirect indication of Feyerabendt’s skills. As an established publisher, Feyerabendt would have had a good distribution network, whereas the press in Wolfenbüttel was new and unproven. However, Rontzier’s title indicates a change in attitudes: at least in some circles, cooking had passed from a craft to an art. The terms Spisekunst, the art of eating, and Kochkunst, the art of cooking, had become established and were clear signs of a sea change in German ideas about food.
It is hard to underestimate the importance of the fact that Germans now had a common language which in contrast to Latin was accessible to everybody in its effect on the burgeoning German culinary identity. Some culinary authors now presented their endeavours as specifically teutsch, German. Besides Hieronymus Bock and his Teutsche Speisskammer (German Larder), of 1550, Walter Ryff was one of the first authors to consciously reflect on national identity in German cooking-pots. The very long title of his work, published (possibly posthumously) in 1549, stressed food and beverages ‘in daily use by us Germans’: Kurtze aber vast eigentliche nutzliche vnd in pflegung der gesundheyt notwendige beschreibung der natur, eigenschafft, Krafft, Tugent, Wirckung, rechten Bereyttung vnd gebrauch, inn speyss vnd drancks von noeten, vnd bey vns Teutschen inn teglichem Gebrauch sind. As a prolific writer, Ryff has repeatedly been accused of plagiarizing various colleagues, but this makes the Kurtze a real treasure trove of insights into the food habits of his time. Studying those, it is important to bear in mind that the author was born in Alsace, but lived in Frankfurt am Main, Mainz, Nuremberg, Kulmbach and Würzburg, while his wife came from Rostock on the Baltic coast.
The Kurtze consists of 82 alphabetically arranged entries covering everything from Acetum/Essig (vinegar) to Zythus/Byer (beer). It is difficult to resist quoting them all, as they are immensely fascinating. Ryff tells us that garlic smells horrible, but that Germans could live without it. Almonds were now grown in Germany and therefore used far more frequently. Goose was more digestible when eaten young and goose lard was good for cakes. Spring asparagus (no mention, unfortunately, of the colour), though not cheap, was highly regarded and customarily boiled in a good meat broth and dressed with vinegar, salt and olive oil (like other authors of the time, Ryff used the term Baumöl, literally, tree oil). Parsley was the vegetable in most general use, both leaf and root, whereas gruel was ‘a coarse dish for coarse people – tough, coarse and unfriendly’. He described basil as noble and fragrant but rarely used and noted that cabbage heads and greens were the most important stand-by in ordinary kitchens to fill empty stomachs, but that when they were served three or four times a day in the Bavarian style as sauerkraut, they made for an unhealthy, even evil diet. Butter was declared so essential to German cooking that not even a water-based soup could be prepared without it, and foreigners were right to call Germans Grass-Alemant, German fatties. Cheese was pronounced heavy and indigestible, especially when matured and made with rennet. No household, either rich or poor, could prepare a dish well without onions. The Kurtze also delved into a few regional food differences, explaining for example that in Alsace, Ryff’s homeland, chickpeas were widely used in wealthy kitchens, though not at all in the rest of Germany. As for spices, Ryff thought that of all the spices used in German cooking, cinnamon was sweetest and best, whereas the green leaves of coriander were declared obnoxious and stinking (it is telling that coriander’s Greek name at the time was translated into German as Wanzenkraut, bug-herb), but the seeds were considered useful in the kitchen and the pharmacy. Pepper is confirmed as the most common spice, and even peasants were using it to make their food more palatable, whereas saffron was delicious in meat broth and, although still expensive, was at last being grown in Germany. On poultry, Ryff reported that chickens were not cheap, but widely consumed, easy to digest and healthy, especially when young and a little fat. Pheasants made a noble dish but were always surpassed by a fattened capon. Partridges Ryff pronounced to be a little more common, but still very good when allowed to hang for a day or two, though not longer, as was the custom in Germany, ‘where we are used to serve game when half-rotted and stinking’. Mustard might smell sour but couldn’t be done without as it made a dish more digestible. The same effect was found in agrest, verjus, which also awakened the appetite. Finally beer in Germany was a cooling summer drink which dampened the drunkenness caused by drinking wine, which was why, according to Ryff, wine-sodden monks cooled themselves down at night by drinking beer.
German cookbooks at this stage were still a young genre as far as the writing itself and the level of detail were concerned. The Italian Scappi in his Opera of 1570 minutely described the many elaborate techniques that were needed for his dishes and gave precise measurements, assuming less knowledge and thus making his work accessible for a larger readership. The translation of Italian and French publications could present a problem if the translator in charge was not up to the job, leading to confusions that persist to the present day. For instance, historians have suggested that the alleged appearance of distinctive German national culinary habits at that time could be ascribed to the renaming of dishes.11 Although their argument is similar to saying that the whole Mediterranean shares one cuisine because everybody uses olive oil, their studies are full of fascinating insights (they also show that it is not enough to classify recipes by names alone). Sauce cameline, the condiment mentioned earlier that was widely used in England, Italy, Catalonia and France, but supposedly not in Germany, is a case in point. Its composition varied considerably according to region, except for one defining ingredient: cinnamon. In Germany it just took a different name, as is shown by a late fifteenth-century Middle Low German recipe collection in which it appeared under the name herensalsin, lords’ sauce. It shared all the characteristics of sauce cameline, namely the inclusion of a large proportion of cinnamon, bread-thickening and dilution with vinegar:
One should take cloves and nutmeg, cardamom, pepper, ginger, all of equal weight; and as much cinnamon as there is of all the others, and add as much toasted white bread as there is of the others, and grind it together, and blend it with strong vinegar. And place it in a cask. It is called the lords’ sauce, and it is good for half a year.12
It is often said that the combination of spices, sweetness, fruit and acidity still found in contemporary German dishes such as Sauerbraten is a German pecularity, a medieval remnant proving the cuisine’s backwardness. Indeed, the combination of sweet and savoury seems to have been a German favourite in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although the use of some kind of acidity was also popular in France at the time. At the end of the sixteenth century and from the south of Germany we get some comments on the combination of fruit and meat (besides much else of interest) from a highly sophisticated traveller, the philosopher and politician Michel de Montaigne. Embarking on a trip from his native Bordeaux to Italy in 1580, his journey took him through Germany and Switzerland. Possessed of an open and inquisitive mind, he enlisted his scribe and servant to keep a travel diary, recording daily life and culinary habits. The following observations are of the habits of the citizens of Lindau on Lake Constance:
They [the Germans] make such an effort with their food and with [the help of] soups, sauces and salads bring such a diversity to the dishes, and everything in good inns is prepared with such good taste that the French aristocratic cuisine is barely comparable, seeing also that in our châteaux one would rarely find such ornate halls. Unknown to us were quince soup, soup with baked apples in it, and cabbage salad, as well as thick soups without bread, for example made with rice, which everybody shares, as separate plates are unknown. Noticeable is the richness in good fish, served with other meat in one dish; trout is not considered desirable and they eat only its spawn; game, snipe and young hare, which are very different to ours but prepared at least as well, are in abundance. We never saw meat dishes that tender as are served daily here. With the meat, cooked plums, pear and apple slices are served [a custom surviving in the form of poached pears and cranberries served with roast game to this day]; sometimes the roast is served first and the soup last, sometimes the other way round. As for fruit, there are only pears, apples which are very good, and nuts, then cheese. With the meat, silver or pewter cutlery is laid out with four containers with various pounded spices, amongst them caraway seeds or something similar that tastes savoury and hot and is sprinkled on the bread; the bread is more often than not baked with fennel seeds. After the meal, full glasses [of wine] are served again together with two or three different things that further the digestion.
The scribe also noted:
The Sire de Montaigne regretted three things on his trip. The first of these was that on departure he had omitted to provide himself with a cook who would have been able to study the local dishes and try them at home; second, that he didn’t employ a German servant or seek the company of a local nobleman since, by relying on the good will of a miserable guide, he experienced great inconvenience; and third, that he didn’t have a Münster13 or something similar in his luggage. Although he had adapted himself so far as to drink wine without water, when there was competitive drinking and he was invited as a gesture of politeness, he never accepted.14 Farmers here provide their labourers with flatbreads baked in the embers, sprinkled with fennelseeds, with bacon and some garlic.
Montaigne had chosen the right moment for his travels. By the 1590s a recession had set in, since the overland trade routes were declining in importance due to world trade shifting from the Mediterranean and Baltic to the Atlantic. When food and especially grain prices gradually inflated, the landed gentry was in a better position than urban manufacturers and tradesmen. In the territories to the east the nobles were able to buy the landholdings of the peasantry, sometimes taking over whole villages, and thus became lords over very large estates. In the west and southwest, after having played such an important political and economic role in the late Middle Ages, many townships lost their power to territorial rulers and became more provincial. Then, from 1618 to 1648, conflicting political and religious interests led to the Thirty Years War. International arguments meshed with German uprisings and escalated into extended clashes between foreign forces on German territory.
Even when times were peaceful the average peasant’s housing could be called modest at best, but when the guards on top of the church tower shouted their warning that troops were approaching, the peasantry abandoned their dwellings and moved lock, stock and barrel – children, moveable goods and livestock – into caves and other hiding places that had often been deliberately fortified ahead of time, for example by planting thornbushes. In this prehistoric form of accomodation life was reduced to a matter of survival. Agricultural production was disrupted when farm buildings were destroyed, fishponds were emptied and livestock slaughtered or taken away by foraging troops, who often left nothing behind but literally scorched earth. The impact on the German economy and society at large varied considerably depending on time and place. In some cases producers of meat and grain, essential supplies for soldiers, could gain significant wealth and power by supplying the large armies, but as a result resources collapsed for the rest of the population. Historians are divided on the sharpness of the resulting drop in population, but agree that the worst-affected areas experienced losses of over two-thirds of the total, whereas some areas seem to have been virtually unaffected. The greatest killers were epidemics such as typhoid, plague and syphilis, all spread by armies on the move. Influenza was often fatal due to malnutrition and lowered resistance. Almost everybody born after 1600 who wasn’t killed in battle was affected by hardship and the disruption of their livelihoods. Overall the damage to the economy was immense, and living standards in many areas of Germany took around a century to return to pre-war levels.