Heidenische küchen (Heathen Cakes)
Heathen cakes are from the 14th German manuscript Ein Buch Von Guter Spise
These are called heathen cakes. One should take a dough and should spread it thin and take a boiled meat and chopped fatty bacon and apples and pepper and eggs therein and bake that and give out and do not damage.
Redaction from Medieval Cookery
http://www.medievalcookery.com/etexts/buch.html#recipe5a
For the boiled meat I decided to use pork to complement the apples. This makes two 9 inch pies in pastry plus one 9 inch pie that doesn’t go in gluten.
- 2 kilo pork shoulder
- 1 kilo green apples
- 12 eggs
- 250gm of bacon
- 1 tablespoon sage
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar
- 600ml of beef stock.
For hot lard pastry
- 575g of flour
- 200g of lard
- 220ml of water
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Dice the apples and roast them in the oven until starting to brown. Put aside and let cool.
Chop up the pork shoulder in rough chunks, boil in the stock and apple cider vinegar for half an hour or until cooked through.
Drain the pork allow to cool slightly and then chop into 1cm pieces.
Chop up bacon until diced amounts and fry lightly.
Whisk eggs together and add pepper, chopped sage and salt.
Combine pork, apples, bacon and egg mix. Set aside.
Put the lard and water in a small saucepan and allow to cook until the lard has dissolved into the water.
Make a well in the flour and then slowly pour the water/lard mix into the flour. Use a wooden spoon to mix it together until it becomes cool enough to knead by hand. take a third of the mix and set aside. cut the remaining in half, roll each half to fit the pans. Evenly split the mix between the two pies. Cut the remaining pastry in half and roll it out to make lids. Tightly pinch the lid to the pie and rub olive oil on the top.
Bake in the 180 degree oven for 40 minutes, or until top is golden brown.
Got some nice compliments on this pie. Personally I found that the hot lard pastry really helped with the flavour and texture of the pie.
The images are of pork and apples without pastry in vegetable parchment pie tins. I bought these from Confoil
While slightly more expensive than disposable aluminium pie tins, they look a lot less jarring than aluminium pie tins if accidentally put on the table, mostly don’t result in sticking of the pie mix to the tin, and were just super super easy to work with. 10/10 would recommend.
