This extraordinary collection of Banat baking recipes was written in the 1920s and 1930s. They were compiled and tested by Aurelia Skripal who was born in 1892 in Grossbetschkerek, now Zrenjanin, in Vojvodina. In 1919 she married her great love Joca, the object of her baking skill. Her happiness is reflected in this collection of pastry recipes. For 25 years – the first entries probably date back to the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire – every successful creation was written down in the cash book of Pleiner Aladár’s delicatessen store.

The book is illustrated with postcards from the time that Aurelia Skripal so passionately collected, the pictures all having a direct or indirect connection with the recipes.

This cookbook is also a map of Banat and reflects the variety of cultures, the constant switching between languages and the influence of the various ethnic groups on this multiethnic region. Of the 136 recipes, 80 were originally written in German and 56 in Hungarian.

Ignaz Franz Castelli, who had fled from Napoleon to Banat in 1861, wrote of the region between the Balkans and Transylvania, today more of a cultural than a geographical entity: “If happiness consists solely of a surfeit of physical pleasures, these Hungarian landowners must have been the happiest in the world.” A glossary of rare culinary expressions is included.

Publisher: Mandelbaum; Edition: 1 (Oct 2005)
Language: German; 250 pages
ISBN-10: 385476166X/
ISBN-13: 978-3854761662