Tiegels and Rutschers

Aside from these special forks and spatulas, our cookery has a rich variety of hearthside equipment dating back to Roman times. For many of their raised-hearth dishes, the Romans employed a lidded cookpot with three legs, which they called a tripus. This was the same type of earthenware vessel used for Gumbis by medieval cooks in the Rhineland. Such a stollichte Hafe (legged pot) was called for specifically in a Gumbis recipe for Ein Krumpus-Kraut (cabbage Gumbis) in the 1691 Vollständiges Nürnbergisches Koch-Buch (Complete Nuremberg Cookbook).15 A pot very like the one in the 1691 recipe appears as figure 16 in the 1788 engraving. The old Pennsylvania Dutch name for such a stewpot was Tiegel. The most practical modern equivalent of a Tiegel would be a porcelainized iron stewpot with a tight-fitting lid or any porcelainized Dutch oven.