Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living

by Henry T. Finck

A specialty of the Austrian and South-German cuisine, the neglect of which elsewhere is incomprehensible, is the Mehlspeise, which ought to be adopted in England and America as an occasional substitute for puddings and pies. There is an endless variety of these Mehlspeisen, under the species Nudeln, Spatzen, Kipferl, Kuchen, Strudel, Nockerl, Flockerl, Knödel, Schmarren. Really, the Kaiserschmarren and the Apfelstrudel ought to be adopted as national American dishes by special act of Congress.

Flavorsome Hungarian flour (Mehl) is used in making these dishes (Speisen) and that is one of the reasons why they are so good. The Hungarian brand of flour is the best in the world, especially the highest grade, known as Auszugmehl. It has an amber tint known among bakers as the gelbliche Stich. On account of its agreeable Flavor, Hungarian flour is sent in large quantities to Germany, and some goes as far as Paris. Because of the freight expenses it is not usually sent north of Berlin. In that city the best bread is made of it, including the favorite Knüppel and the Milchbrode. Farther north, a mixture of German and American flour is used.

A few American grocers import Hungarian flour. The test of the best European product is that when the hand is laid on it, it flies up between the fingers. American flour packs. Mrs. Arpad Gerster (whose husband is a brother of the famous Hungarian prima donna, Etelka Gerster) gives me the very important information that our flour can be made almost equal to the foreign by drying it on a platter on top of the stove. Bread, cakes, noodles, etc., made with flour thus dried have the much-coveted European lightness.

The Germans know as well as the French that the crust is the sweetest and most digestible part of bread and that its Flavor depends on there being a maximum of crust with a minimum of crumb, quite as much as it does on the grade of flour used, and the method of making the dough and baking it. To ensure a maximum of crust, white bread is usually baked in the size of rolls, as Semmel, and in a great variety of other shapes, every region having its specialty.

While it is true that, as a German writer remarks, the eating of white bread is a mark of prosperity in his country, it must not be inferred that it is only the poorer classes who buy the cheaper Schwarzbrod, made of rye. On account of its agreeable flavor this "black-bread" appeals particularly to epicures, and the darkest variety of it, Pumpernickel, is called for by gourmets the world over as the best thing to eat with cheeses of the Limburger type. It is also used as an ingredient in various Mehlspeisen and crêmes. It is made of flour from which the bran has not been bolted.

Cereal perfumery is not a thing you can buy at an apothecary's. You get it by munching a piece of rye bread with fresh butter on it and consciously breathing out through the nose.

In France rye bread is almost unknown. In England attempts were made a few years ago to popularize it. Nature and other periodicals took up the matter, which had been brought to the fore during a political campaign where some of the speakers deplored the lot of the German laboring man for being obliged to eat rye bread. By way of reply, attention was called to the fact that the Kaiser himself always has rye bread on his table, and that in American cities, as in those of Germany, there is much demand for such bread in the wealthy quarters. Apparently the attempt to enrich the British menu with a cheap new delicacy failed, for trade reports of 1912 intimated that while there is at all times a demand for corn and oats on the Liverpool market, rye does not find sale there.

There are many other German bread and cake specialties that deserve to be introduced in other countries. Two of them are already known to epicures of many countries: the Lebkuchen, or honeycake, which made Nuremburg famous, and the lye-soaked, twisted, crisp Pretzel. This has a little salt strewn on the crust and the same is true of other kinds of small breads. Particularly good is the Mohnbrot, which is peppered with poppy seeds. Try it. Poppy seed is as good to eat as any nut that grows.

In these things the Germans show a good deal of imagination; but as for the anise-seeds so often mingled with the rye bread, I wish they would leave them to the imagination. The general use of them has probably done more than anything else to prevent the acceptance of German rye bread in foreign countries.