Juggling life, liberty and happiness

Got another one knocked out of the way!

I made Lebkuchen 164 on Friday and mistranslated the amount of sugar for batch one (this was made extremely obvious by the total disaster the cookies turned into!)

So, a bunch more research ensued to find out what 'vierdung' really meant, thank goodness for the Middle High German dictionaries online. It was a bit of a puzzle, but not too bad.

Batch two turned out much much better, and it doesn't break your teeth either.

Today I've been able to spend two hours sewing on Henry's new Rock, its turning out really great and I can't wait till I can see it on him. The skirt is falling into such nice round folds already.

Pictures later, of the cookies and the Rock.

I attempted Lebkuchen recipe 151, version 2 yesterday. It came out much better than version 1. I used a tiny amount of clove and cardamom this time, and its much nicer tasting. They look like lacy golden leaves, and the cookies just melt on the tongue too, sooo yummy.

The texture of the dough as you are working it is really interesting. First its hot and sticky, like molten plastic, then it sets up quickly to a hard dough, so you have to work quickly once you have it out of the bowl and onto the floured board. I'm glad I made a half batch, as I'm not sure I could process a whole batch by myself before the dough sets up like concrete.


Now on to recipe 163, as soon as I get some mace spice and rosewater.

I think I figured out the problem with the Lebkuchen recipe translations in Sabina Welserin's cookbook.

In comparing the Middle High German original to the translated English, you can see that the MHG original uses the word "vierling" or "fierling" to describe the measurement of flour. The translator has translated vierling as pound.

Now I've written Prof. Gloning to find out if he knows what the modern equivalent of a vierling would be. I suspect that its the same as a viertel which is described as

viertel [1]
a traditional unit of volume in several European countries. Oddly, although the name means "quarter" in German the traditional viertel is not really 1/4 of any other unit. The Danish viertel equals 8 pots or about 7.74 liters (2.04 U.S. liquid gallons or 1.70 British imperial gallons). In Switzerland the viertel is 40 schoppen, which is exactly 15 liters (3.9626 U.S. liquid gallons or 3.3000 British imperial gallons).


Thus, in recipe 151, which in the MHG original calls for one fiertellin of flour to a pfund of sugar and a qúertlin of honey, if we use the Swiss measurement, of 15 liters of flour to a pound of sugar and a quart of honey (assuming that qúertlin = quart which this online dictionary, DEUTSCHES RECHTSWÖRTERBUCH seems to point to)

Therefore, the translation has some flaws when it comes to measurements, no wonder the last batch came out gooey, the flour was off by a lot! Not just the flour measurement amounts, but also the actual amount listed to be in the recipe. I'm not quite sure how in 163 she got "ain vierling mell" to be equal to "a quarter pound flour".

Off to go recalculate the amount of flour each recipe calls for.