bringing back trisanet
My wife is a historian, and sometimes, she likes to look up really old German recipes.
One of those recipes was for strawberry soup from 1752.
“Durchklaube die Erdbeer, und wasche sie schön, zuckers nach Genügen; gieß gemeinen oder, so du willst, süßen Wein daran, treibs durch und lass es nur einen Sud aufsieden: alsdenn rößte weißtes und würflicht-geschnittenes Brod im Schmalz, richte die Erdbeere darüber. Wenn man will, kan man ein wenig Trisanet drauf streuen.”
Modern translation:
“Sort through the strawberries and wash them thoroughly. Add sugar to taste, then pour over some ordinary wine—or, if you prefer, sweet wine. Pass the mixture through a sieve and let it come briefly to a boil. Meanwhile, fry cubes of white bread in lard until browned, then arrange the strawberries over the bread. If desired, sprinkle a little trisanet on top.”
She was interested in making it, but it needed one ingredient she hadn't ever heard of: Trisanet. So she researched a bit further, and found out it's a specific spice mix, sometimes also referred to as 'tresenei' or 'trisenet'. It used to be very popular in Germany, but faded away in favor of just using Zimtzucker (a mix of cinnamon and sugar), which is cheaper.
There are different recipes for it as it seems to have regional variants and predates the metric units, but thankfully a kind soul online has shared these two. It mainly needs ginger, mace, cinnamon, sugar, and galangal, with some variations adding other spices like cardamom or pepper, too.
My wife chose the original first listed recipe, which says:
- half a pound of sugar
- one Lot ginger
- one cinnamon bark
- one Quintlein mace
- one Quintlein galingale (=galangal)
In metric units, half a pound of sugar is 255g, a Lot ginger is 16g, and a Quintlein is 4g. A modern version of Quintlein is Quäntchen and would translate to a pinch (a pinch of salt, etc.). Instead of the bark, use cinnamon powder of your choice, preferably Ceylon.
Galangal was more frequently used here back then, but now is hardly available anywhere except asian grocery stores. We tried our best finding powdered galangal, but ended up buying fresh roots and drying and mixing it ourselves. My wife cut it into thin slices, and put it in the oven at 100 degrees Celsius for 3-4 hours, then let it cool down and used an electric spice grinder to turn it into fine powder. Historically, the powder would be a lot less fine.
I have to say, it's been amazing and fits to a lot of different foods, no matter if sweet or salty. Even added it to a red lentil stew. I asked my wife to make a low sugar version next :)
My favorite right now is making a hot beverage with it, similar to chai or salep. With a teaspoon of the powder and a bit of hot water and/or milk.
We have gifted friends and family a lot of this spice mix for Christmas (we had them try it beforehand on a previous visit) and they were all delighted :)
I encourage you to try it out.
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