Baked Strauben

Sabina Welserin-1553

141 To bake Strauben for a meal

Take six eggs and a little milk with water, salt it, beat it together well and put the flour into it. Do not make it thick, then it is right.

1 cup milky water (3/4 water. 1/4 milk)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
4 medium eggs
oil for coating pans

Combine milky water and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the flour all at once and stir constantly, over medium heat, with a wooden spoon or spatula until it is very firm and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Take off the heat and add the eggs one at a time, beating vigorously until each egg is completely incorporated. The dough should be firm and glossy. Pipe the mixture through a wide tipped pastry bag onto a large greased pan. Bake the strauben in a preheated 375 degree oven for 30-40 minutes (depending on the size that you made) or until puffy and golden. Remove from the oven and put a slask or hole in the bottom to allow steam to escape and return to the oven for a few minute to dry them. Cool and store loose.


Interpreting medieval recipes can be tricky because you never know if steps were left out or not and by whom. Since many medieval manuscripts would have been copied, errors can be either from the original cooks, the original clerk or a later copist/translater. There is only one way to deal with that- try the recipe as written. For me I could never make the original recipe work as written, it was fine flavor wise if you like rocks but it was always denser than I thought useful for any food purpose when baked. There are variant fried strauben recipes and it works well with them but still nothing special. Then it strikes me, as it has struck other cooks, that this is more workable as a hot dough method like a pate choux or a churro recipe. The purpose is to precook the flour and egg and then the baking or oil frying makes the pastry puff and hold air pockets. It is the kind of step that people who do something all the time might forget, like strudel cooks forgetting the pound the bejesus out of the dough step.

I adjusted the order of entry of the ingredients to the modern variant because it actually makes it easier to teach to new cooks. It can be done following the original order but it is trickier for making the porridgelike dough.