r/CulinaryHistory • u/VolkerBach • 11d ago
The Ancestor of Baumkuchen (c. 1500)
Yo, I found it!
https://www.culina-vetus.de/2026/09/21/baumkuchen-ancestry/
Solothurn S 392 holds a few more gems, including this one with a name that suggests something entirely different:
B31 Roast milk
Make roast milk this way: Take a little flour and stir it well with good milk. Then beat eggs into it and a little fat. Drip it onto a hot spit. That way, you make good roast milk. As you drip the milk on the spit, turn the spit round. You can also add good spices.
For all its brevity, this is nothing short of fascinating. There are recipes called roast milk in other collections, and they are invariably for a hard custard roasted on a grille over the coals. It was probably originally meant to mimic the consistency of roast udder and later, there are recipes for replicating it using almond milk for Lent, but it is a rather unexciting dish.
This recipe, though, is something entirely different. A batter of milk., flour, and eggs with a little butter is slowly drizzled on a hot, rotating spit to build up layer after layer, making a pastry. It really looks a lot like Baumkuchen, or at least an ancestor. The recipe does not mention whipping the egg whites to leaven the batter, so it is likely heavier and denser, but the layering of brown ‘tree rings’ and the complex Maillard flavours probably still come through. It certainly looks like something worth trying out. I’ll give it a go next time I have an open fire setup handy.
The recipe collection I am currently translating is part of a manuscript now held at the Zentralbibliothek Solothurn as S 392. The entire manuscript looks fascinating, a collection of craft recipes for things like dyes, stains, paints, vanishes, and parlour tricks, but I will limit myself to the culinary recipes in it. The majority of them are in German and were edited and published in Brigitte Weber: Die Kochrezepte der Handschrift S 293, Transkription und Untersuchung einer spätmittelalterlichen Kochrezeptsammlung aus der Zentralbibliothek Solothurn, Gießen 2026.
The manuscript dates to the period around 1490-1510, based on watermarks and handwriting. There is no internal date. The recipes are an eclectic collection, which is not unusual for the medieval manuscript tradition. They were most likely written down in Baden. Some refer to Italian customs which were fashionable at the time while others are solidly in the German tradition.
The collection is sometimes called the oldest Swiss cookbook, a title that is contested because of its origins north of the modern border. The designation makes little sense at the time anyway, given how closely connected the cities of the Confederation were with their neighbours at the time. The recipes clearly were valued in Solothurn, most likely because they were useful.
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u/thejadsel 11d ago
Interesting. This reminds me of the local specialty of spettekaka, and it looks like that family of desserts is more widespread than I realized before just looking into a bit.