The year is 1266 - the Bohemian troops of Ottokar have arrived at Deggendorf and are preparing for a siege. They send a spy to infiltrate the city before they decide when to attack.
Inside the city walls, the mayor´s wife is preparing sweet dumplings for dinner. Looking out of the winter she spots the spy scaling the city walls. The quick-thinking woman took her Knödel and threw them at the spy. One of them hit him and he fell off the city walls. This ended the siege and peace reigned once more.
Even though this is possibly only a good story, historic tales of food origin are fascinating and intriguing. Like the dumpling, the famous triangular sandwiches of Turin also started out with a tale in which two cafe owners travelled to the US and came across sandwiches for the first time.This gave them the idea for an inexpensive, pre-dinner snack using Turin´s poor man´s White loaf. This bread was baked in a square tin and was seen as nutritionally poor. Historically the hangman was paid in this bread which was passed to him bottom up to show disrespect for his occupation. If they could see the bread´s popularity now.
Sally Lunn´s are another example of food with a past...if you are interested, thee is an article specifically on this.
What is your favourite historic food and what is its story. Put it in the comments.
Here is the Knödel video
Add comment
Comments