Smoked pork

Rump. After you've cut the pork, cut out the muscles, unbroken, with a knife. After that, put rows in clean bowl, salting it a lot, and after that add another row above these, that they are piled on top of each other, salt again generously on all sides and let stand in the salt 20 days. Then after this period, rinse well with water and put on a board, face-to-face, put another board above, and over the board put things very heavy as you want, a stone, an iron, or what you find, and leave thus for 10-12 days, to ooze all liquid. After this time, rinse well with water and put in wine, covering by 2-3 fingers, let stand for 24 hours. In wine, as you want, add ground spices and make spicy as desired. Then put in the sun or just in open air for 4-5 days. Then smoke in moderate smoke, to air more. When you will want to dry them in smoke, then in order that smoke will not permeate the rump, but make them nice and good in taste, wrapt hem up in waxed paper and tie loosely with thin thread, just to keep the paper on; and let stand 3 months, as much in smoke as in air.

This is the translation of a seventeenth century Romanian cookbook, entitled “The Book where I write dishes of fish, crayfish, oysters, snails, vegetables, salads and other dishes for fast and non-fast days. In their serving order.” The manuscript, originally written in Slavonic script, was translated to the modern roman alphabet by Ioana Constantinescu and published in a book called O lume intr-o carte de bucate: Manuscris din epoca brancoveneasca by the Romanian Cultural Foundation Editions (ISBN 9735770903). The translation made for the second half of this book, while the first half was an introductory study by Matei Cazaccu. This study was also published in English under the title “The Story of Romanian Gastronomy” but alas, the recipes themselves were not included.

Cookbooks from the Early Modern period are rare in Eastern Europe. Elena Cartaleanu did a thorough revision of the English translation, and added quite a few useful notes regarding traditional Romanian cookery.