From “heathens’ cakes” to “pig’s ears”: tracing a food’s journey across cultures, centuries and cookbooks
It is intriguing from the perspective of food history to find in 19th and 20th century Estonian recipe collections the same foods – that is, foods sharing the same names – found back in European cookbooks of the 14th and 15th centuries. It is noteworthy that they have survived this long, and invites a closer study of the phenomenon. For example, 16th century sources contain a record about the frying of heathen cakes, a kind of fritter, in Estonia. A dish by the same name is also found in 18th and 19th century recipe collections. It is a noteworthy phenomenon for a dish to have such a long history in Estonian cuisine, spanning centuries in recipe collections, and merits a closer look.
Medieval European cookbooks listed two completely different foods under the name of heathen cakes and both were influenced from foods from the east. It is likely that the cakes made it to Tallinn and finer Estonian cuisine through Hanseatic merchants. It is not ultimately clear whether a single heathen cake recipe became domesticated in these parts already in the Middle Ages. In any case, heathen cakes would remain in Estonian cuisine for several centuries. As late as the early 19th century, the name in the local Baltic German cuisine referred to a delicacy made of egg-based batter fried in oil.
Starting from the 18th century, the history of these fritters in Estonian cuisine can be traced through cookbooks. Old recipe collections document the changes and development in the tradition of making these cakes. The traditions of preparing these cakes were not passed on only in time, but circulated within society, crossing social and class lines. Earlier known from the elites’ culture, the dish reached the tables of ordinary people in the late 19th and early 20th century. In Estonian conditions, it meant the dish also crossed ethnic lines – from the German elite to the Estonian common folk’s menus. In the course of adaptation process, which was dictated and guided by cookbooks and cooking courses, the name of the dish changed several times (heydenssche koken, klenätid, Räderkuchen, rattakokid, seakõrvad), and changes also took place in the flavour nuances (a transition from spicier, more robust favours to milder ones) and even the appearance of the cakes. The story of the heathen cakes or pig’s ears in Estonian cuisine demonstrates how long and tortuous an originally elite dish can be as it makes its way to the tables of the common folk. The domestication and adaptation of such international recipes in the historical Estonian cuisine demonstrates the transregional cultural exchange, as well as culinary mobility and communication.
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