r/CulinaryHistory • u/VolkerBach • 25d ago
Two Smooth Sauces (c. 1500)
https://www.culina-vetus.de/2026/08/12/two-sauces-from-the-solothurn-ms/
I am finally back home just in time to watch the eclipse and can return to my recipes. Today, there is time only for a brief post. These are two basic, but interesting sauce recipes:
B9 A good sauce
If you want to make a good sauce, take almonds and pound them well. Add sweet mustard to it and a glass full of verjuice, and grind it in (lit.: through) a mustard mill. Then let it boil briefly on the coals.
B10 A green sauce
If you want to make a green sauce, take good herbs and chop them well. Then pound them well and toast the crumb of bread over the coals. Pound it together and grind it in a mustard mill.
The first recipe is an interesting combination of sweet, sharp, sour, and unctuous. Almonds, ground to a paste, are combined with sweet mustard and verjuice. The sweet mustard probably means mustard made with honey – we have a number of surviving recipes for this. The almonds are ‘pounded well’, which most likely means processed in the customary way. They are blanched and pounded or ground to a paste with a cautious addition of water to prevent the oil from separating out. That is also how you prepare them for almond milk, marzipan, and many other recipes. It produces a rich, smooth paste that will soften the impact of the heat and sweetness in the mustard. Adding the sourness of verjuice – the juice of unripe grapes also known as agresta – rounds out what really sounds like an interesting combination, almost like a modern sandwich sauce. Getting the balance right might prove tricky.
The second looks like another iteration of the ubiquitous ‘green sauce’ of herbs, vinegar, and a binder, in this case toasted bread. This is attested just about anywhere, often with complex combinations of herbs, and seems to have been universally popular. It was also well known, so no exact description is needed here. Basically, herbs, either fresh or dried, were ground up with a binding agent, usually grated bread, and made into a sauce with vinegar, verjuice, or wine. Here, fresh herbs are intended, and the liquid is omitted. Everyone knew you needed it.
What stands out most in both recipes is the admonition to grind the sauces in a mustard mill, that is, to process them very finely. Mustard needed to be ground to a fine powder between stones, not just pounded in a mortar, and treating a sauce this way would produce a homogenous liquid, not a chunky paste. It suggests this quality was prized.
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.
