Schürz-Kuchen - Part Two - The Cooking and Taste Test

First a recap of the recipe:   Take the yolks of 8 eggs, and of 4 eggs the white. 8 loth sugar, spice to taste, beat all this together very well, then stir enough flour into it so that it makes a thick dough. Roll it well through, cut it and bake it till done. They can be rolled very thin, as they rise quite a bit. This makes about 70 to 80 cookies.

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Okay, I took a trip to the local supermarket to gather up the ingredients...Eggs, Flour, Sugar and lard (to try them fried as well as baked).

I had to guess what kind of flour might be appropriate as I was presented with a dizzying array of flours at the supermarket.  As for the lard, I figure if Grandmother Dahms fried anything, it would have been in lard.  Apparently, non-hydrogenated lard is better (so says Chef Google) but difficult to find and I am not up to rendering my own.  As it will become apparent in the next picture, I had no need of all that sugar...

 

This is 8 loth of sugar.  It's about 116 grams...that comes out to just a bit less than a cup of sugar...

The ingredients are ready.  8 egg yolks, the whites of 4 eggs, 8 loth of sugar and some "spice to taste"... for the spice, I added 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon.  I whisked all those together before adding the flour.

Three cups of flour wasn't enough.  When I tried to roll it out, it was just all sticky and mushy, so it went back into the bowl and I added more flour.

With about  3/4 more cup of flour (so, about 3 3/4 cups total), I ended up with a ball of dough that was sturdy enough to roll out.

 After flouring my work surface and the rolling pin, I rolled the dough pretty thin as the recipe says to.  It's probably 2-3 mm thick.

 

Next, I cut it into diamond shapes.  Chef Google came to the rescue with instructions on how to cut and fold Schurz-Küchen.

  

Once the diamond shapes were cut, I cut about a 1" to 2" slit in the middle of each one. The small slits were better for the fancy folding and tucking step that comes next.

Then, you take one corner of the diamond and put it through the slit and with a little manipulation, you end up with the cute little shapes shown in the picture below.

 

The Schürz-Kuchen are ready for the oven.  I set the oven temperature at 375 F and baked for 10 minutes (when it looked like they were done). Again, Chef Google helped with this.

  

This is what one looked like right out of the oven.  I probably could have let them cook a little longer to get a real golden brown, but I think they would have turned into little bricks if I had.

  

On the broken surface, it's a pretty dense little cookie.

  

All prettied up with powered sugar and ready to eat.  So, how did they taste?  Well, a bit bland.  They had the texture of a dense cake (maybe like a kind of dry pound cake) with a firm crust.  Not very sweet at all with a hint of cinammon. More like the flavor of a rice cake than of a sweet treat.  They certainly tasted authentic and I do think they turned out how they were "supposed" to. Still, the recipes I've found on Chef Google say to fry them, so that's next...

  

A few scoops of lard in the pan.  I've never used lard for anything before, so I was just hoping to not burn down the house.

  

Once the lard melted, it behaved just like any cooking oil.  I fried them til they were a golden brown on each side.  It only took a few minutes.

  

The finished result. I dusted most of them with powdered sugar.

  

The air bubbles on the broken surface are a lot bigger in the fried version.

  

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the fried version and the baked version.  Obviously, the baked version is much more dense.

  

Bottom left: Baked and plain, Top middle: Fried and dusted with powdered sugar, Bottom right: Baked and dusted with powdered sugar. 

The fried ones where definitely an improvement over the baked ones. The outside was crisp and the inside was still pretty dense, like a very firm cake. As far as taste, they just had a little bit extra "something" that made them a little tastier.  They still aren't going to win any prizes for sweetest dessert.  The flavor is more like a biscotti.  They seem like something you would eat while drinking your coffee or tea, not as a dessert. 

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Congratulations to me! I made it through the first recipe without burning down the house and actually ended up with an edible product. Next up is Mürbeteich (Short Pastry Dough).

Who was Grandmother Dahms?

 

Grandmother Dahms and Family, circa 1908 in Minnesota.  From left to right is Grandmother Dahms, her grandson Frederick, Jr., her son Fredrick Miller (he changed his name when he came to the U.S.), her granddaughter Wilhelmina "Minnie" Miller and her daughter-in-law Wilhelmina Puzhui Marie Miller (nee Jastram). 

Grandmother Dahms was born Caroline Dühmke on 6 July 1822 in Stettin, Prussia.  When she was young, she worked as a cook for a large landholder in a place called Furstenwalde, a small town near Berlin.

Letter from Bertha Miller to her brother Edwin, written July 14, 1939 in which she writes about their grandmothers cookbook and the place she worked.

 
Caroline first married Friedrich Christian Müller of Pommerania, Prussia. By 1853,  they had 3 children, Herman, Carl, and August.  On December 5, 1853, they boarded a ship called the "Hudson" in Bremen, Germany destined for West Canada.

Dahms and Müller families on the passenger list for the ship "Hudson" bound for West Canada.

Also aboard that ship was Caroline's sister, Albertine with her husband, Wilhelm Dahms and their children Auguste and Wilhelm.  Sadly each sister lost an infant child on that voyage, both August Müller and Wilhelm Dahms died during the trip.

Probably Albertine Dümke, the sister of Caroline. The back of the picture says "Grandmother Dahms Sister."

I don't know why, but the Müllers and Dahms did not stay in Canada.  They returned to Prussia sometime before 1857, where Caroline and Friedrich had a 4th child, my great, great grandfather Johann Friedrich Philipp Müller.

Birth Certificate for Johann Friedrich Philipp Müller, son of Friedrich and Caroline - Here's what it says: "Johnann Friedrich Phillipp legitimate son of the here deceased carpenter Friedrich Christian Müller and his wife, now married Dahms, nee Carolien? Maria Dühmke, was born here on the sixths of June Eighteen Hundred Fifty Seven/ June 6, 1857. This is officially certified herewith through the grace of the holy church record book, for the purpose of emigration to America. Loitz, September 29, 1868"   The signature at the end is not legible.

Here's where it gets interesting.  Sometime between 1857 and 1868, Caroline's husband Friedrich and her sister Albertine died.  It was then that Caroline married her brother-in-law, Wilhelm Dahms.  She returned to the United States in 1868 with Wilhelm and her son, Friedrich (who later changed the spelling of his name to Frederick). Her other children are not on the passenger list and I believe only two of them survived to adulthood, my grandfather Frederick and a step-brother (either Carl or Herman).

1868 passenger list for the ship "Borussia" bound for New York, New York - Wilhelm Dahms, Caroline Dahms and Friedrich Müller

Caroline, Wilhelm and Frederick settled in St. Louis, Missouri for a short time, but by 1880, Caroline was widowed again and she was living with her son and his family in Prior Lake, Scott County, Minnesota.

1880 U.S. Census, Minnesota, Scott County, Spring Lake, Village of Prior Lake - Frederick Miller, his wife Wilhelmina and his mother Caroline (Dahms).

 She died in Prior Lake June 25, 1912.  I haven't found exactly where she is buried, but she's probably in the small cemetery of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church at Fish Lake, in Prior Lake, Minnesota.

Death Certificate for Caroline Dahms

Her recipe book passed to her son Fredrick, who passed it to his son Edwin, who passed it to his daughter, Margaret, who passed it to her niece (my mother) Rosemary...and finally, about 160 years after it was written, it passed to me.

Schürz-Kuchen - Part One - The Recipe

Transcription:

Schürz-Kuchen

Man nimt von 8 Eier das Gelbe und von 4 daß Weiße 8 Loth Zucker Gewürz nach belieben schlage dies gut durch einander, rührt dan soweit Mehl daran daß es ein dicker Teich wird, rollt es gut durch, schneidet es und backt es gar. Sie können ganz dünn gerollt werden, da sie doch sehr aufgehen, dies werden ungefähr 70 bis 80 Stück

Translation:

Schuerz-Kuchen

Take the yolks of 8 eggs, and of 4 eggs the white. 8 loth sugar, spice to taste, beat all this together very well, then stir enough flour into it so that it makes a thick dough. Roll it well through, cut it and bake it till done. They can be rolled very thin, as they rise quite a bit. This makes about 70 to 80 cookies.

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Right off the bat, there are a couple of potential problem areas.  First, "spice to taste"?  What the heck spices are we talking about here.  Based on the other recipes, I'm guessing cinnamon and maybe cardamom. I'll have to do a little experimenting there.  Second, "bake it till done."  What temperature?  How long?  Did she really mean "bake"?  I've found a couple modern recipes for Schuerz-Kuchen and they are all deep fried.  I suppose I'll need to try it baked and fried.  Be back soon after I do some research on the spices and figure out a baking temperature.

The Cookbook

Sample pages from Grandmother Dahms cookbook

Before I could get started, a couple of problems needed to be overcome:

Problem One: The cookbook is written in German, which I do not read, write or speak.

Problem Two: The cookbook is written in the old German script, which most Germans no longer read or write.

So, I used the internet to find myself a transcriber/translator and found a wonderful gal, Gerda Dinwiddie to transcribe and translate the entire booklet (26 pages total). She even did some research to figure out how to convert the old measurements into modern ones and gave me some basic background on some of the recipes.  Now I don't have any excuses not to start baking.

The Adventure Begins

My Great-Great-Great Grandmother Dahms was born in 1822 in Stettin, Prussia.  She worked as a cook in a large German manor when she was young.  Her handwritten cookbook has been passed down through the generations and, as the unofficial historian of the family, it eventually landed on my doorstep.

I am not a cook.  In fact, I tend to avoid the kitchen whenever possible.  Most of the food I eat comes in cardboard boxes that go in the microwave or is handed to me from drive through windows.  My homemade meals primarily consist of cereal and PB& J's.

I am definitely not a baker.  The only cake recipe I ever make turns out wrong over half the time (still tastes good though, even when it's sunken and soggy in the middle and burnt on the outside).  I baked a pie once...it was awful.

I'm probably the least likely person in my family to take on the challenge of recreating Grandmother Dahms recipes, but I'm gonna do it.  There are 36 recipes in the cookbook.  Most are dessert recipes, but some are for main dishes. I plan to try them out in the order they are presented in the book and hope to complete one recipe a week.  I'm going to document it all here - the good, the bad, the disasters.

Wish me luck!

Your Intrepid Historical Culinary Adventurer,

Kate