Festive fare Catching the high spirits of carnival

Press, 24 January 1986, Page 14

Festive fare Catching the high spirits of carnival

MAVIS AIREY

continues a seasonal tour of her favourite cookery

books, collected during 15 years living in Europe.

For anyone brought up with Pancake Day as the sole surviving relic of preLenten feasting, Carnival celebrations in Europe come as quite a shock.

Whether it is a throwback to the pagan, midwinter rituals of Saturnalia, or just the Christians’ “farewell to the flesh” — which is what the word - “carnival” means — in countries like Germany, Austria and Belgium the six weeks leading up to Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) are a time of unparalleled feasting and revelry. The Carnival spirit is amazingly catching: it is an excuse for fancy dress and street parades and masked balls, for heavy drinking and generally boisterous behaviour, which seems to bring out the prankster in even the most sedate citizens.

Germany may have the most famous Carnivals, and Austria the most glamorous, but Belgium can probably claim to have more Carnivals per square kilometre than any other country in Europe.

During the time we lived there, we managed to see several.

Nearly every town and village has its own, symbolic Carnival figures, sometimes comic, sometimes grotesque.

Festivities start on the first Sunday after Epiphany in Ronse, when thousands of masked “Bonmos” (madmen for the day) pay homage to their chosen king and queen, finally “storming” the town.

At the end of January, in Eben-Emael, hooded "houres” armed with a broom or a pig’s bladder, chase the inhabitants of the town.

Towards the German border, in Malmedy, after the Carnival pageant, the streets are full of witches, savages, jesters, and grotesques who run riot among the onlookers, playing pranks and inciting them to join in the fun.

The festivities go on far into the night. Rumour has it that Carnival excesses are so commonplace that a spouse’s behaviour during these 24 hours cannot be cited as

grounds for divorce! The Aalst procession is headed by giants, whereas in Eupen, it is the foolish prince Funkenkorps, who reigns for the day.

The most famous Belgian Carnival, though, is in the town of Binche. Someone has even suggested it gave its name to the English word “binge.” Festivities take place throughout the Carnival season, working up to Shrove Tuesday, when the focal point is the procession and dance of the “Gilles”: the boys and men of the town, dressed in brilliantly coloured padded suits hung with bells, and extraordinary head-dresses of nodding ostrich plumes which would not be out of place at the Moulin Rouge. The pageant apparently has its origins in the fif-

teenth century “Ballet of the Incas,” which Mary of Hungary, who then lived in Binche, presented in honour of her brother, Charles V, after the Spaniards had conquered Peru.

As they dance, the Gilles bombard onlookers with oranges, symbolic of the treasures of Peru. Their aim is excellent, as we found to our cost! Fritters are traditional Carnival fare, as people aim to use up forbidden foods before the rigours of Lent begin. In Belgium, street vendors sell paper cones piled high with crisp balls of fried choux pastry, drenched in icing sugar. The French speakers call them “Beignets,” the Flemish speakers, “01lebollen.”

The German speciality is “Cologne Muzen,” which are laced with rum and almonds. But perhaps the most delicious Carnival cakes are the Viennese “Faschingskrapfen,” which Joseph Wechsberg describes in his lovely book, "The

cooking of Vienna’s Empire.” “Vienna’s Fasching is frankly devoted to the pleasures of wine, women, and song, and, naturally, waltzing,” he writes. “There are hundreds of balls during the Fasching weeks ... No ball is complete without a buffet and on each buffet there are Faschingskrapfen. “Fasching wouldn’t be what it is without the feathery fried cakes that look like doughnuts and taste so much better.

“During 1815, the year of the Congress of Vienna, over 100 million Faschingskrapfen were said to have been eaten. Some were broken in half by young girls and given to their young men. The young men were trapped, since a broken Krapfen was considered a token of engagement.”