The Streets of Nuremberg I

As I've said, Nuremberg's Altstadt is extremely beautiful. Included here are random shots of statues, buildings, fountains and our late afternoon snack.

About that snack. We wanted to try Lebkuchen, Nuremberg's famous and officially protected designation of origin baked good. It's a cookie, but soft. It has a long and storied history, traced back to Franconian monks (those monks did everything: saved the classics, cared for the poor, advanced science and medicine, invented lebkuchen, maultaschen dumplings, made beer--we should be grateful to them) in the 1200s. They were formed on unconsecrated communion wafers, or so the story says, to stop them from sticking to the pan. Today-- they still are, at least in Nuremberg. Some are dipped in chocolate (obviously not back in the Middle Ages, as there was no chocolate in Europe), some glazed, and some just have nuts on top. They're similar to gingerbread, and I had looked at recipes. Too much work, including making your own candied fruit, and containing a slew of spices that back in those days, would have literally paid a king's ransom: all spice, cardamom, coriander, cloves, aniseed, and ginger. They use nut flour in the dough, the type and percent varies by the region and the bakery. In Nuremberg, some of the higher end bakeries use up to 40% nut flour. They're similar to Speculoos cookies, which I have made, but much softer.

So we went to the Wicklein bakery, mainly because it was right across from the Frauenkirche. You can take classes here, participate in Lebkuchen making and dip your creations, etc. We opted just to get two coffees, and out of the array of choices, went for a traditional lebkuchen, no chocolate, no glaze, just three almonds on top. With our coffee, we got cute little lebkuchen glazed stars. We liked it. It was nothing like the stuff you get in packages in the US. We bought a few prepackaged selections to take home, but they might not make it. We have a long trip ahead of us.

That's a long "about" on the snack, but I really like food, and have long had an interest in the history of food. As a young student of history, I waondered about what people ate, the socio-cultural and economic issues surrounding food and all that sort of thing. This was strengthened and given some legitimacy in my first semester as a grad student in Early Modern History, when one of my professors assigned Fernand Braudel's "Civilization and Capitalism", all three volumes in one semester. I thought-- ha-- see, this is a serious thing, studying the nitty gritty of consumption.

As they say, sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little more, and you bore people to tears.

pictures in order: der schöner Brunnen, detail from sB, Saint George, some bird, detail from bird, from the Toy Museum, not sure, lebkuchen, Melanchthon Denkmal (statue of Lutheran reformer Melanchton), Kaiser Wilhelm I.Leia mais