Tag: Germany

Under My Foreign Vine and Fig Tree – The German Housewife

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This is the first article in January of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on January 6, 1907, and is a continuation of last year’s talk on keeping house in foreign countries and what can be learned.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of Boston Sunday Post.

Under My Foreign Vine and Fig Tree

The German Housewife

Before entering upon the consideration of the German cuisine, I am moved by a sense of justice and by sincere admiration for the national hausfrau to say a few words of her.

Housewifery is an honorable profession in in Germany. In all ranks it is studied by the women from childhood, and practiced at every age. The wonderful land owes more to the intelligent thrift of her women than can be appreciated in America, where kitchen duties are reckoned “menial” by rich parvenus who spend the rest of their lives in forgetting the steps by which they have climbed to the height which has turned their heads, and college girls glory in their utter ignorance of practical housewifery. Fathers, sons and husbands have more time and calmer thought for acquiring learning which has made them great because daughters, mothers and wives assume the care and conduct of domestic affairs and prove themselves competent to the undertaking.

KNOW HOW TO MARKET

Our hausfrau does the marketing even after she drives to market in her own carriage, and is too shrewd in selection and bargaining to be outwitted by the merchant. The fine stock phrases that retain the custom of the mechanic’s and day laborer’s wife in our country pass for sounding air with the Teutonic marketer. She knows the worth of meat, vegetables, groceries and fruits as well as if she had sold as well as bought them from babyhood. She keeps a sharp eye upon the scales; is rigid as to scraps and trimmings that belong to the purchaser; she is a judge of fish, and wide-awake to its dietetic and economic values; she knows how to utilize second-rate fruits, but she will not pay full price for what is not excellent. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her management of raw materials after she has bought them wisely. She rules larder and kitchen as efficiently as he controls shop, counting-room, office and class-room. For every pound of meat, every handful of herbs, sent home, she expects to receive an account. The crude ingredients are an investment, and she will demand her interest regularly. Wastefulness is a crime; the mistress who condones extravagance in cook, butler or housemaid is recreant to her trust.

To her such a judge the “easy ways” of the traveling America are a continual marvel. She has heard tales that rival Grimm’s stories of genii and fairy godmothers, of the mighty fortunes made and spent in the transatlantic “States.” The rapid making of what grows slowly, if steadily, in her native land may be a mystery to her. She is at no loss to comprehend on what swift wings riches fly away when once she has marked our works and ways in the household.

UNPLEASANT CONTRASTS

In turn, the American resident for one or more seasons in a German town is loftily disdainful of the appointments of the apartment—usually paid for by the room—in which she bestows her family and portable belongings, with the fixed intention of living after the manner of the country for three, six or twelve months, while the children study German (the mother says “while they learn it”), and she visits galleries and gets bargains in lace and amber.

There is no furnace for warming the living rooms. The salon is disfigured by a huge porcelain stove, planted stubbornly in one corner. Mark Twain is not the only traveler who likens it to a family monument. After some weeks of dependence upon it for all the warmth that can be coaxed into the lofty room with its dreary outlook through casement windows upon sunless skies, the exile overcomes the sense of graveyard chill and gloom excited by the tall, hard, white construction she cannot screen or drape. The bedrooms are luxurious—almost to sinfulness, thinks the hausfrau —if they are supplied with smaller cenotaphs.

The kitchen is probably small, paved with stone or brick, furnished sparsely, and often destitute of hot and cold water. Most of the utensils are wooden.

Then, it you keep late hours, you will have to face a reproachful “hausmeister,” or janitor, who religiously closes the outer door at 10 P.M. Woe be it to you if you should forget the enormous key he gives you when you announce your intention of staying out until midnight! You will pay a fee to be allowed to enter your own domicile and grope your way upstairs in inky blackness by the ghastly illumination of your Sulphur matches.

Nevertheless, housekeeping in Germany has wonderful compensations in a comparatively unstrained servant question. Where two maids can be had from $8 to $10 a month, and the two of them do twice as much work as any two over here would, with laundry included and plain sewing thrown in; when the police can compel them to stay with you up to the time for which they contracted, there, indeed, is a distracted American housekeeper’s haven of rest.

This police surveillance of servants is curious. Each maid must register at the nearest station when taking a place, and the policeman can arbitrate in case of a dispute. He also inspects the maids’ rooms to see that they are in proper condition.

Every German servant musty give two weeks’ warning or a month before leaving a place. Her mistress, at her departure, will write her character in a book, which she must show at her next place.

If, in pondering upon these items which differentiate the servant problem of the German housewife from that which wears her American sister into an untimely grave, we are moved to amusement by the recollection of the high and mightiness of imported Anna, Martha, Gretchen and Dorothea when they inquire on this side of the ocean into our recommendations to their confidence, their society and putative services for a consideration that grows bigger every month—if, I say, we be moved to momentary mirth, our mood soon changes. For, why should we, the most imitative and progressive nation upon earth, lag so far behind the conservative Teutons in what lays the corner-stone of domestic comfort?

HOME LAUNDERING

It is a relief to scarified national complacency to pass on to the home laundry system of our hausfrau and compare it with ours. Lavish as we account ourselves to be in the matter of household plenishing, few families outside of the millionaire belt can boast of keeping in store twelve dozen of each kind of bed, table and body linen. The rule of twelve is imperative in the German household. Washing is done but once a month; sometimes but once in six weeks in some families; respectable and well to-do quarterly! As garments, bedclothes and napery are soiled by wear and use they are carried off to “die Boden,” a big upper chamber furnished with clotheslines, there to hang until the next washday. The foreigner who recoils from the idea of festering perspiration and bacteria and begs for the privilege of paying handsomely for a weekly washday is regarded with wondering suspicion.

“Yours must be a dirty people!” was the comment of a blunt hausfrau when I told her that we sent our clothes to the laundry every Monday, and that washing was done every day in some wealthy families, laundresses being engaged to do nothing else.

The unconscious humor of the remark was ample compensation for the rudeness to one who had that day chanced to pass the open door of “die Boden.”

They undoubtedly have the advantage of us in respect to family mending—the bugbear of our housemother. Her German sister, as a rule, employs a visiting seamstress, who once a week does the mending for the absurd salary of from $1.50 to $2 a month.

TWO BREAKFASTS

Being safely domiciled, if you are going to be really German you will rise at 7 o’clock for the “Erstes Fruhstuck,” or first breakfast, consisting of coffee or tea and rolls.

At 10 o’clock comes the “Zweites Fruhstuck,” or second breakfast, when one’s fainting spirit is sustained with sandwiches, fresh or stewed fruit, cold sausage and beer. In the season, pears, apples and cherries are plentiful and good; the peaches, while as fine as ours, are rarer and expensive; and the berries, particularly blackberries and wild strawberries, are very nice.

Except among the higher classes, “Mittagsessen,” or dinner is eaten in the middle of the day, from 12 to 2. Business is suspended for this function and the children come home from school, where they have been since 7 o’clock if it happens to be summer, or since 8 in winter. After dinner most of the men rest for an hour. Another un-American custom.

A truly German dinner always has soup; perhaps a lentil soup, with soaked and boiled lentils and small pieces of sausage added to a rich beef stock; or, even more characteristic, the much loved “Biersuppe,” or beer soup, made with a pint, each, of milk and water, one-half pint of light beer, three ounces of currants, three ounces of flour, three ounces of sugar, two spoonful of salt, and the yolk of an egg.

I digress from the line of narrative at this point, to avow frankly my disrelish for certain distinctively German soups. Aside from my exceptional aversion to chocolate in any form, I do not think a sweet, thin preparation of chocolate, served in soup-plates as the first course of a dinner, appetizing or wholesome. The custom savors too much of the ultra-economical expedient of the early housewives of New England, who served Indian meal pudding before the meat course, to blunt desire for the costlier food. Nor did I ever learn to like a queer broth based upon ripe rose-pips. They were pounded fine and cooked in weak stock, and a few whole pips, cooked tender, were left to float upon the surface of each plateful.

THE MEAT COURSE

With meat courses are served potatoes and one other vegetable.

The meat may perhaps be a roast, sometimes seasoned with onions. Seedless raisins are roasted with beef or they are added to the gravy.

Then there is the much-loved “Hasenbratten,” or wild hare, larded with bacon and roasted. Again it may be “Sauerbratten,” or a pot roast laid down in spiced vinegar for several days beforehand, then roasted and dished with a gravy of the spiced vinegar and browned juices.

Around the “Sauerbratten” are dished “Kloese,” or potato balls, mashed potatoes moulded around small blocks of toast and fried in butter. “Pfefferkuchen,” a sort of gingerbread, is also cut in pieces and used in the gravy to thicken it.

A favorite dish for Sunday dinner is a large cabbage parboiled and cooled before the centre is removed and filled with a finely chopped raw meat. Then it is boiled in a cloth so that it keeps its shape. It is sliced into wedge-shaped pieces at the table.

In Scott’s immortal lines beginning:

“At Christmas time the bells were rung,
At Christmas time the mass was sung,”

We read:

“Nor fails old Scotland to produce
At that glad time her savory goose.”

Substitute “Germany” for “Scotland,” and you have the record of a culinary custom as invariable in the Kaiser’s realm as the appearance of roast turkey at an English or American Christmas dinner.

Dessert and black coffee are served together. Cream puddings are extremely popular, always with a fruit sauce. Pies and tarts never have a top crust, and the shells are generally bought at a confectioner’s and filled with whipped cream and fruit conserves. The ice cream is like our frozen custard flavored with fruits, and is helped in tiny portions. Whipped cream is served with almost all cream cakes and tarts.

DELICIOUS COFFEE

At 4 o’clock comes the “Kaffee,” which, when it becomes a formal function where women are invited to bring their work or to play whist, becomes the far-famed “Kaffee Klatsch.” Here one has coffee which is delicious when served in the German way, in the little brass coffee pot in which it is made. A piece of white “coffee paper” (something like blotting paper) is usually placed over the holes of the perculator to cause slower dripping, and thus to gain the full strength of the coffee.

Here, also, one has the many delicious “Kuchen,” or cakes, such as “Kaffee Kuchen,” or coffee cake; “Nuss Kuchern,” or nut cake; apple, peach and cheese kuchen, “Honigkuchen,” or honey cakes. If it happens to be Lent, there will be the marvelous “Berliner Pfanne Kuchen,” or so-called pancakes. In reality, they are more like our dough-nuts, with jelly imbedded in them, fried in boiling fat. Often, too, there is smooth, rich German chocolate with whipped cream.

Between 6 and 8 o’clock comes supper, or “Abendessen,” with a half-dozen or more kinds of cold meats; uncooked smoked “Liverwurst,” or liver sausage, “Cervalatewurst,” made of the best smoked pork, and that crowning delicacy, to the German taste, raw ham, cut very thin and eaten with salt and pepper. It is served on snowy white individual wooden plates. Yet the immigrant German will hesitate long before eating this in America even though the best Westphalian hams are said to be imported.

This habit of eating uncooked ham is undoubtedly the reason of the fearful distrust of American pork awakened in Germany by the tales of trichinae-poisoning in our country. The baleful germs may be killed by long boiling. They are rampant in raw meat.

Another favorite uncooked meat is Beef a la Tartare, simply raw Hamburger flavored with chopped onion, salt and pepper and covered with a raw egg.

With the supper meats go a fish or other heavy salad, pumpernickel sandwiches, cut very thin, with cheese between, and some of the beautiful preserved fruits in which housekeepers take such pride. Sweet pumpernickel is often grated and served with whipped cream.

No German woman would allow a caller to be in her home ten minutes without pressing upon her something to eat. This form of hospitality is not so onerous as it sounds, for in addition to a well-stocked larder one can send out the maid with a little plate and get, freshly cut, a half-dozen varieties of beautifully sliced meat, every kind of cake and tart, and for 10 cents enough cream ready whipped for half a dozen people.

If one is going to the opera, and most music-loving Germans go several times a week during the season, supper is earlier and afterward the cafes are frequented. German women, strange to say, while they drink their beer at symphony concerts, rarely take anything to drink at cafes, contenting themselves with an ice or tart.

German Recipes (Contributed).

PFEFFERNUSSE.

Sugar, one pound.
Cinnamon, two teaspoonfuls.
Nutmeg, two teaspoonfuls.
Four eggs.
Flour, one pound.
A little pepper.

Beat the sugar with the yolks for a quarter of an hour. Put in the spices and flour, mould into little round cakes about the size of a soda biscuit. Bake slowly on iron sheets. Frost with plain icing.

BERLINER PFANNKUCHEN.

Warm milk, one-half cup.
Butter, one-quarter pound.
Sugar, five tablespoonfuls.
Yolks of four eggs.
Peel of one lemon, grated.
One yeast cake.
Flour, one pound.
A few bitter almonds.

Dissolve the yeast in warm milk, stir with the salt into the flour till a soft dough is formed. Stand in a warm place over night to rise. In the morning, melt the butter, add the sugar, well-beaten yolks, lemon peel and grated almonds. Mix well and let it stand until very light. Roll into sheets about two inches thick, and cut round. On the top of each cake put currant jelly or jam, and fold over the corners, moistening with a little water to close the edges. Let them rise again. Drop in boiling lard to fry like doughnuts. Dust with powdered sugar.

SAUERBRATTEN (SOUR ROAST.)

Soak five or six pounds of meat in a spiced vinegar, for three or four days in summer, eight to ten days in winter. Spice the vinegar highly with mixed spices ground fine, three bay leaves and peppercorns, and boil. Put the meat in this in a deep bowl and cover with a plate. Turn the meat every day, but do not insert a fork.

Take out the meat, lard with bacon, bake in a saucepan like a pot roast, adding a few carrots and a little onion. Just before serving, remove the roast, pour off most of the fat, add a little browned flour and some of the spiced vinegar. Serve in a sauceboat or pour around the roast.

KAFFEEKUCHEN.

Butter, one pound.
Flour, one and a quarter pounds.
Sixteen eggs.
Sugar, one and a quarter pounds.
Bitter almonds, one-eight pound.
Peel of one lemon, grated.
One yeast cake.

Beat the eggs and sugar together, then add the flavoring, flour and yeast. Let it rise till very light. Then roll in sheets. Spread with melted butter, sprinkle with grated almonds and cinnamon, and bake in a moderate oven.

This cake may be varied by the addition of raisins and currants. It may also be formed into a twist or plait, or for children is sometimes cut into little men, with currants for eyes. The plaited cake is always iced with a plain unboiled icing.

Marion Harland

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Christmas Fare in Many Lands

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This is the third article in December of the School for Housewives 1906 series published on December 16, 1907, and is a discussion on Christmas traditions in other countries.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of Boston Sunday Post.

Christmas Fare in Many Lands

DO YOU ever realize how much of the good cheer of Christmas is dependent on cookery? Every land—indeed, almost every family—has its own special dainties of the season, the omission of which would mean the loss of half the Christmas spirit.

From remote antiquity has come to us this habit of Christmas feasting; indeed, the Christmas cakes are said to typify a direct connection between the adoration of the God of Light and the expression of his power on earth in the fire and the hearth.

In many of their Christmas customs today the peasantry of Europe is all unwittingly following the traditions of its pagan ancestry. Thus, little do the people of central France, who each year bake small crescent-shaped “gateaux de Noel,” called “cornabeaux,” to give to the poor, realize that the odd shape of these cakes, resembling a bullock’s horns, is a heritage of their heathen forefathers.

Equally ignorant are the Scandinavians, who bake their Christmas cakes in the shape of a pig, and feast on roast pork for their Christmas dinner. They do not think that they are commemorating the sacrificial boar whose life was offered up each Yuletide.

STRANGE SUPERSTITIONS

The superstitions which so frequently cling around Christmas customs are not confined to saving scraps of the Yule log to ward off thunderstorms. A certain French loaf cake baked by some of the old-time farmers on Christmas Eves, so far from being indigestible, is thought to have healing powers, and is saved all through the year to give to the sick of the family.

Then there is a Scandinavian cake made from the flour of the last sheaf of corn harvested, a piece of which is always kept until spring, and given to the plowman for good luck in his crops.

The Christmas spirit is, doubtless, the same the world over, though it is manifested in some very curious foods. While the Russian and the Scandinavian always feast on Christmas Day on roast suckling pig, stuffed with buckwheat or chestnuts, the German regales himself on a fat goose, or, if he be from the Southern Rhine, on the “carpen blau,” or blue carp. This is cut in small pieces, and stewed in a red wine sauce, flavored with salt, pepper, a small onion, a bay leaf or two, slices of lemon, a large lump of butter and breadcrumbs. Just before serving, the raw blood of the carp and a lump of sugar are added.

While the Anglo-Saxon is eating his crisp, juicy turkey, the people of Panama are reveling in sancolcho, a special Christmas stew of beef, chicken, pork, potatoes, plantains, tomatoes, onions and peppers, cooked into a thick brown gravy, and the Neapolitan is feasting on eels boiled in oil.

The Christmas cake is equally varied, though it has a striking similarity in that most of it is dark, rich and plummy.

Holland, Amsterdam especially, indulges in quantities of St. Nicholas cake—a crisp brown gingerbread—made in the form of men and women. This is often called “vrigers,” or sweethearts, because each person gets a cake of the opposite sex. The Dutch also have another Christmas cake, scarcely so inviting. It is called “taai-taai,” or “tough-tough,” from its lack of tenderness. This cake, fortunately, has the happy faculty of mellowing with age.

After all, it is to Germany one must go for the real Christmas spirit in cookery, as in everything else. For weeks before hand the hausfrau and all her flock are making pleasing preparations for the great day. Indeed, if she be especially thrifty, she has been paying to the baker throughout the year a small weekly “stolle” tax, in order to get not only stolle, but all her cakes free at Christmas.

While the confectioner bakes most of the German cakes, especially the huge baumkuchen, numbers are also prepared at home.

Baumkuchen, a white cake, with streaks of fawn color running through it, is typically German. It is at least three feet high and hollow clear through the centre. The top is cut in points like a turret and iced with a white icing, while all over the glazed surface of the sides are knobs daubed with icing. Such a cake naturally requires to be baked in a special mould.

The baking of the springerle, a white cake with anise seed, causes quite a jubilation. The entire family gathers round the kitchen table and mould the dough into round little wooden forms of flowers and figures; the forms—which, by the way, may be bought in this country—are removed and the cakes baked on iron sheets.

Aix-la-Chapelle is noted for its honigkuchen (honey cakes). A delicious German recipe for this is to heat three-quarters of a pound of honey with three-quarters of a pound of sugar. Then add the pounded paste of seven ounces of sweet and 1½ ounces of bitter almonds, 3½ ounces of candied lemon peel, 1 ounce each of cloves and cinnamon, the grated rind of a lemon, 1-3 ounce of soda, and half cup of rosewater. After this is well mixed, add about 1¼ pounds of flour to make a firm dough that can be well kneaded. When cold, roll out, stick cherries over it, and bake in a moderate oven.

No German family would be without stolle at Christmas, a very rich cake raised with yeast, nor without their delicious candy marzipan. Many of the cakes and candies are hung on the Christmas tree, as well as barley sugar candy, apples and gilded nuts. Little cakes, iced with different colored sugar, can be bought especially for the decoration. These are left on the tree for two weeks or until the “baumplundern” (robbing the tree), when they are taken down with special ceremonies and given to the children of the poor. Most of the German cakes keep a long time.

Christmas in England means equally good things to eat, though possibly not so varied. Plum puddings, fruit cake and mince pie are never wanting, and delightfully rich and “plummy” are they all.

AN ENGLISH CEREMONY

The stirring of the plum pudding is made a special ceremony. The night before Christmas, or sometimes a week earlier, the family all gather round a holly-decked dining table. Then, as the butler brings in a huge bowl filled with the pudding batter, the father of the household rises, and, pouring m a glass of brandy, stirs it with a long spoon, wishing good luck, good cheer and good health to all, and to the King as well. He is followed, in turn, by each member of the family, down to the tiniest baby, and by the servants according to rank, each stirring in his glass of brandy, or, if one be a teetotaler, milk is sometimes substituted. Even the wee pet dog must be allowed to stir.

When that blazing plum pudding is brought in at dinner the next day one must be sure to get a piece of the flame for good luck.

One must also be very sure they have not tasted mince pie that season before they get a tart from the Christmas dinner, for that would be very bad luck, indeed.

After dessert very probably there will be snap-dragon, with the guests all pulling raisins out of blazing brandy. When they have eaten all they wish, salt is poured on the dish, and very weird does every one look in the blue light.

France does not pay as much attention to Christmas as do many other countries. New Year’s is her great day for feasting. Therefore, there is very little distinctive fare, beyond the few cakes already mentioned and some candy in odd forms and figures. No foreigners, however, eat candy as do the Americans, even at the holiday season.

The Italian Christmas is largely religious, but there is a varied interest in the Christmas fare. We find the Neapolitans and others of southern Italy going mad over “Il capitone,” the eel, reeking with garlic and oil, that every one must eat on Christmas day. All Christmas Eve the markets are full of excited people auctioning this delicacy of the season, which brings many times its regular price; indeed, the very poor often beggar themselves in their determination to buy an eel.

“Pizza,” a pastry filled with fruit and eggs, is another favorite Christmas dish.

In north Italy we find the people always eating Agnolotti (or Ravioli) on this day.

The giving of presents in an imported custom, and instead of a Christmas tree the wealthier people have a dark corner, adorned to represent a manger and the Nativity. This is called “Il Presepio,” and is common all over Italy. The churches have it for the poorer classes.

GALA TIMES IN MEXICO

Christmas in Mexico is a gala time, indeed; the feasting and present-giving lasts for nine days. During Posadas—the feast previous to Christmas (“Noche Buena”)—nine families club together, each taking a night. Even the children are brought to these feasts, where there are refreshments according to one’s means.

All gather in the parlor, and after singing and telling of the rosaries the hostess brings into the room a great basket filled with bananas, fruit, peanuts and “confites,” the national candy, of little sugared balls in many colors. These are thrown to the small children, to their intense delight.

Later, the older boys and young men blindfold the girls, give them a big stick and take them out to the courtyard, in the centre of which hangs a big pot decorated as a bull or man and filled, as was the basket, with assorted good things. Each girl in turn, after being turned till she loses her bearings, is given a try at the pot with her stick.

When a girl finally breaks the pot such a made scramble ensues, after which the distribution of presents on trays takes place.

For nine succeeding nights this is repeated until Christmas Eve, when a big dinner is given at midnight, to which all contribute. At this meal is served soup, turkey, vegetables and “Fiambi,” a kind of fruit salad, of organs, bananas and chicken marinaded in French dressing. The dessert is usually ices in fancy moulds, followed by much fun over nuts and raisins.

In Peru, Panama and other South American countries they also have an eight-days’ celebration at Christmas. The young girls, dressed all in white decollete, much-ruffled muslin gowns, with flowers in their hair, go into the plaza each night and dance in procession. This is followed by a feast.

Always at this season the people eat Buenonella, a very light egg fritter, in the shape of a ring and fried in lard. These are sold everywhere on the streets.

They also have “Toronde alecante,” a sort of nougat, and many delicious “dulce,” as cakes and candy are called.

One of the favorites is called “Dulce de Naranja.” Take four large, thick-skinned navel oranges and cut them in round slices about a quarter of an inch thick, skin and all. Boil with one quart of water and a pound of sugar until the skin is tender. This should make a thick syrup like marmalade. If the oranges get too soft, take them out and pour the syrup over them.

Even Clavinistic Scotland has certain Christmas dishes, the chief being an extra rich shortcake, made of two pounds of flour, one-half pound of sugar, one pound of butter and one ounce candied peel. After washing the salt from the butter, rub it to a cream with the sugar, add the flour, which has been warmed, and mix carefully with a wooden spoon. Roll with a rolling pin or knead well with the hands. Press into tins, add comfits or sugared caraway seeds and the cinnamon, and bake in a moderate oven until crisp and brown, about three-quarters of an hour.

In far-away Calcutta they also have the Christmas spirit, and the natives make innumerable little cakes and present them to the English Sahibs. Sometimes these cakes are received by the score as offerings from the tradespeople and servants—though “backsheesh,” be it said, is usually expected in return.

The following recipes are all used by families noted for their good cooking in the lands from which they hall:

Marzipan.
(The German Christmas candy).

1 pound sweet almonds (blanched).
1-16 pound bitter almonds or ½ ounce of the flavoring.
1 pound pulverized sugar (the finest confectioner’s).
A few drops of rosewater.

Buy the almonds shelled. Pound them to a paste in a mortar and add the rosewater. Mix in the sugar gradually and work to a paste of sufficient consistency to roll out. Sugar the board before rolling.

Marzipan may be made in any fancy shape or in moulds. A favorite way with the Germans is to roll part of it into a round cake about an inch thick, then mould another portion into a long, sausage-shaped piece and run around the edge of this cake, moistening it first with rosewater, so it sticks. Put candied cherries over the surface.

The marzipan may be put in the oven a minute to harden or even slightly brown. Sometimes the paste is divided into three parts, and colored brown, red and green with some harmless essence, and then put together in layers.

Stolle.
(A favorite German Christmas cake.)

3½ pounds flour.
1 pint lukewarm milk.
8 eggs (yolks).
1 yeast cake.
1 pint melted butter.
½pound stoned raisins.
½ pound sugar.
6 ounces chopped almonds.

Mix the flour with the yeast dissolved in warm milk and salt, and let it rise in a warm place. Beat the yolks and sugar together. Stir up the butter. Add to the dough, then add the fruit and lemon peel, and about a dessertspoonful of yeast that has been kept out. Raise again until very light. Mould into long loaves like a Vienna loaf, but not so pointed. Dent the top slightly with a knife, glaze with melted butter, and bake in a moderate over three-quarters of an hour. Almonds are often stuck in the top before going into the oven.

Springerle.
(A German Cake.)

One pound sugar.
Four eggs.
One lemon and grated rind.
One pound flour.
A knifepointful of soda.

Mix the soda through the sugar and beat well with the eggs. Add the other ingredients and put dough away to rest. Take off rather small pieces of the dough; roll out on the board to the thickness of a knifeblade. The moulds are sprinkled with flour, and the rolled-cut dough os pressed tightly on them. The cakes are then put on buttered tins and covered with anise seed, and are allowed to stand over night, being baked the next day in a moderate oven.

Cut-and-Come-Again Cake.
(An English Nursery Fruit Cake.)

One pound flour.
One-half pound butter.
Three-quarters pound raisins.
One-quarter pound currants.
Three ounces of candied peel.
Two eggs.
Six ounces sugar.
One tablespoonful of baking powder.
Milk to make a stiff dough.

Mix well and bake for two hours.
This cake may be eaten plain, or can have an almond icing covered with a white icing.

Almond Icing.

One pound confectioner’s sugar.
Three-quarters pound ground sweet almonds.
Two or three eggs.
A little rose or orange-flower water.

Mix the sugar and almonds together, make a hole in the centre and stir in two eggs and the rosewater. Wet to a firm paste, using the third egg if necessary. Turn the mixture on to a board that has been dusted with sugar to prevent sticking. Roll with a rolling-pin to the size of the cake. Place it on top and press smooth. Cover with a white boiled or unboiled icing.

Marion Harland

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