Category: An item of food or drink your persona may have grown, prepared, consumed, or known of. Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?
Persona period inspiration and use:
- The Kochbuch of Sabina Welserin contains many recipes for fruit pies, and this seemed a good choice for sweet treat for a picnic lunch at an event. I decided on an apple pie as it was too early in the season for most of the other fruits. The book includes numerous apple pie recipes, and, looking for something a little different, I came across a description (but not recipe) for an apple and raisin pie from Philippine Welser that appealed.
- Philippine Welser, wife of Archduke Ferdinand II of Further Austria, and a member of the same family as Sabina, edited and published her own recipe collection, De re coquinaria, in 1545. This has not been published in English, but some recipes are included or described in Bach.
Design, Materials and Construction:
Recipe: Sabina Welser has a recipe (number 14) in which apples are sliced, “floated” in fat until brown, layered in a pie with spices and raisins, and baked with a crust on top. For the convenience of the picnic, I was making small individual pies, which made layering fiddly, so I choose a simpler recipe described by Bach as “chopped apples, precooked in fat with raisins, sugar, fat, and cinnamon”. I chopped some apples and, along with some raisins, sautéed these gently in butter (my preferred choice of fat for a vegetarian friendly pie), and mixed in sugar and cinnamon to taste. This was baked in a pie with a double (top and bottom) crust.
I completely forgot to take a photograph of these pies (although they did look just like the Genovese Tarts). They were delicious.
Reference:
- Bach, V. The kitchen, food, and cooking in Reformation Germany. Rowman and Littlefield, Maryland, 2016.
- Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin, 1553, http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html
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