Cookbooks exist in many languages, some of which are never translated into English, which means translating a recipe if you want to actually cook or bake it. The type of non-English cookbooks I most often turn to are Swiss ones written in German. Although most people living in the German-speaking cantons speak some form of Swiss-German, written material is always in German. But how does one translate a baking recipe from a cookbook, especially an older one? In years gone by it was likely not common for recipes to be made outside the regions they evolved in, or if they were, they were adapted over time. Now we can find cookbooks from anywhere in the world, opening up a diversity of recipes. Yet translating them can be an interesting endeavour, because there are a number of things to consider.
The first has to do with ingredients, which may seem odd, because eggs are eggs right? Wrong, well kind-of. In many parts of Europe, eggs are not refrigerated (because they aren't washed), so eggs will always be at room temperature. Sugar will typically not be an issue, except for the fact that sugar in Europe may come from sugar beets, instead of sugar cane (there might be some differences in taste). Butter is generally not an issue either. There are also ingredients that are more challenging to decipher or exist more local to the source of the cookbook. Good examples include Triebsalz (baker's ammonia), and Potash, raising agents often seen in gingerbread recipes. Even though most recipes are written in German, this does not preclude Swiss words appearing in recipes. A good example is cream - in German the word is Sahne, in Swiss-German Rahm, and in older cookbooks Nidlen.
Another issue is flour. There are subtle differences in the type of wheat grown in North America and Europe. The majority of North American wheat is of the hard variety, whereas European wheat is mostly soft. The difference? Hard wheat has more gluten than soft wheat, which has weaker gluten and less protein. Soft wheat is ideal for baking pastries, cake, and biscuits (i.e. not bread). European hard-wheat flours are sometimes made with North American wheat. On top of that every country in Europe has its own way of specifying flour types, which makes it challenging. Sometimes older recipes will only say something like Weissmehl, which is simply plain flour (or white flour if you want the literal translation). If you are not sure, find an online supermarket from the country in question and look up the ingredient. In some, like the Swiss Migros, they will have the product, and a nutritional breakdown online. For example "Bio Weissmehl" is an organic white flour with a protein content of 11g/100g or 11% (note that protein in German is expressed as Eiweiss, or egg-white).
Measurements are generally in grams in more recent historic cookbooks (Switzerland converted completely to metric in 1877). Further back and you will have to deal with measures that are more regional. For example Loth - a Loth (or Lot) was a measure used in German speaking regions (and still found in cookbooks into the 20th century). Rule of thumb says a loth corresponds to a "spoonful". A lot had different meaning based on the definition of a Pfund (pound) - a Pfund contained 32 loth. Typically it was 14-18g, in Switzerland a Pfund was approximately 470g, so a Loth = 14.7g (but this varied by city). The more interesting measurements, are the spoon-based quantities. The easiest are Esslöffel (tablespoon, ca. 15ml), and Teelöffel (teaspoon, ca. 5ml). The odd ones out are (i) Kaffeelöffel, which is a coffee spoon, slightly larger than a teaspoon, and (ii) Messerspitze, which is the point of a knife.
The final issue of course is the oven. Europeans generally have access to more types of ovens than North Americans, (although this is slowly changing), and different types of oven will bake differently. Old recipes will generally use terms like Mittelhitze, which means somewhere between 180-190°C (355-375°F), and is generally used for biscuits that should bake golden brown.
Translating old recipes is sometimes more investigative and experimentation that anything else.
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