Transylvanian peach strudel

Introduction and medieval recipe

This is my first attempt at redacting a peach strudel based on the Prince of Transylvania's Court Cookbook, a sixteenth-century Hungarian cookbook.

Here is the recipe for strudel dough:

The next are about the strudels. Make the strudel dough like this. Make fine flour from the wheat. Warm clean water for this, but it shouldn't be too hot, you should be able to put your hand in it. Add some salt and some butter, put the flour onto the table, knead it, cut out its center, pour warm water there instead. Whip three or four eggs, mix it with your hands, then wash yourself. Keep kneading it with your hands, put butter on your palms so the dough won't get stuck. Once it's done, make egg-sized slices. Put flour on the table, then put the dough onto it, make sure to put them far enough so they won't get stuck. Put butter on top, too. Paste it with feathers made from eight or ten feathers. You can make strudels and strudel cakes from this dough. You have to stuff these, but you can find that among the cakes. Have baking sheets for the strudels. If you have none, baking them won't yield the best results.

I really like the "use a baking sheet!" instruction here; it makes you think about the differences between medieval and modern technology.

As instructed, I looked among the cakes for the strudel fillings. Here is the recipe for the filling of peach cake:

Peel the peach, slice it, take out the seeds, add cinnamon and sugar, pour rose or marjoram water onto it, and if you have neither, wine will do.

I had sliced, frozen peach slices from a local farmer in the freezer, left over from Thanksgiving, so this seemed like a good recipe to try.

My recipe

First, make the filling. Measure approximately 5 cups of sliced peaches (a bit less than a 2-pound freezer pack). Mix with half a cup of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a tablespoon of rosewater.

Melt 8 tablespoons of butter, and set aside.

Sift together 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and a pinch of salt. Make a well in the center of the flour. Mix together 1 large egg, 1/2 cup water, and 1 tbsp melted butter, and pour into the well. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients with your fingers. When all the liquid is incorporated, knead it for about ten minutes, dipping your hands in the butter to keep the dough from sticking. Cover and let rest for 30 to 60 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out the strudel dough as thinly as possible (it will be nearly translucent). Brush it with more melted butter, spread the filling over it, then roll it up. Spread more melted butter over the top. Bake on parchment paper for 35-50 minutes, until dark, golden brown.

Notes, in practice

I ended up putting the kneaded strudel dough in the fridge overnight, because we had to take Martin the cat to the emergency vet. (He's fine, but he has been prone to infections lately; I suspect he was stressed by the combination of the kitten and Thanksgiving houseguests, and he's getting older.) We have a new convection oven which I don't entirely understand yet; I actually baked the strudel at 375 on the convection setting, pulled it out, let it cool a bit, sliced it, and then decided the inner parts of the strudel were too wet and restored it to the oven for a while. Baking the sliced bits meant that delicious caramelized peach juices ran all over my parchment paper; I like this effect, but I doubt it's original.

The strudel was very good hot, but when cold the dough didn't have the crunchy/tender combination I was hoping for. I'm not sure whether that's a flaw in my technique, or a problem with the excessive resting time, or whether I just needed to brush on even more butter; I definitely had butter left over. My redaction was also fairly light on sugar, as modern tastes go; if I made this using the same maybe-underripe frozen peaches again, I might err on the sweeter side. (On the other hand, if you have truly ripe fresh peaches, you might be able to use just a couple of spoonfuls of sugar.)