Carl Friedrich von Rumohr's Falscher Rehschlegel: at first glance the recipe in his Geist der Kochkunst, Spirit of Cookery of 1822 seems to belong to the category of mockfood - but does that make sense from the pen of a highly rational, reality-obsessed empiricist? Similar instructions for how to prepare meat, notably mutton, as game can be found in a row of popular German cookery books of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, whereas other examples for mockfood in German culinary history are rare and restricted to periods of shortage. So the story behind Rumohr's surprising recipe really is the story of hunting and venison in Germany. The article looks at both and explores their socio-cultural symbolism through the centuries in a gastronomic context.
University of California Press