they twist and form the dough into knots; elsewhere they use special presses to create a rose shape. Anybody but a linguist would be foolish to try to list all the names for these confections, but even among the pros success isn’t guaranteed. The singularly obsessive, four-volume Wortatlas der deutschen Umgangssprach (The Word Atlas of German Speech) maps out twenty-two variations of yeast-raised donuts, yet that barely scratches the surface. How old the tradition of frying dough is in this part of the world is anybody’s guess. It’s perfectly plausible that the idea was introduced by the Romans, who once had settlements in places like Vienna and Cologne. Certainly the region had plenty of lard and at least a modicum of wheat back then.The first documented mention of the donut in German comes from the early-thirteenth-century epic Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach. The poem follows the eponymous knight of the Round Table as he traipses through a mythical land on a quest for the Holy Grail. There are the usual medieval chivalric shenanigans, but to donut scholars the only event that matters occurs in Book Four, when Parzifal arrives in a war-ravaged land ruled by the ill-fated Queen Conwiramurs. This country is so desolate, the narrator writes, that even mead was in short supply, and the locals were so deprived they had never heard the sound of frying Trühending Krapfen. (Trühending was a town renowned for its fry cakes.) Our hero, after seducing and marrying the queen, soon heads for the hills, presumably after the grail, though I wonder if it wasn’t just an excuse to stop by Trühending to pick up a freshly fried dozen for the road. The medieval donut mecca still exists. It is now called Wassertrüdingen and should you walk into a bakery and ask for Krapfen, what you’ll get is a jelly donut. The local chamber of commerce makes a big deal of the very oblique Parzifal connection, but despite the enthusiasm of local historians, we actually have no idea what those early medieval fried treats looked or tasted like. One thing that’s dead certain is that they weren’t jelly donuts. The fourteenth-century cookbook Das Buch von guter Speise gives you four filling options, all of which involve spiced apples. These are combined with nuts, honey, grapes, or—that perennial favorite—pike guts. What the book’s author doesn’t tell you is how to make the outside pastry. It might have been a yeast dough, but maybe not. A hundred years later, a similar recipe in the best-selling Bavarian cookbook, Küchenmeisterei, for “gefüllete Krapffen” (filled donuts), does specify a yeast dough but other sources suggest pastry dough. (Incidentally, here you have the option of using pears, apples, calf brains, or game bird hash for the
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