Preparing some of the dishes that Karin Pagel learned about last summer would be a recipe for disaster.

Pagel, having perused more than 100 German cookbooks from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, describes a recipe for cooking a goose brought live to the table.

A University of Kansas assistant professor of Germanic languages and literatures, Pagel reads the last line of the German recipe, whose other details are intentionally omitted here:

"The goose will be fully cooked, but when you cut into her, she'll still let out a little scream."

Pagel, pretty much a vegetarian, discovered that gem as she browsed a private cookbook collection in Germany. Last fall, she presented a paper on the cookbooks at a Hall Center for the Humanities faculty seminar at KU.

The cooked goose wasn't the only novel recipe. For example, a women's encyclopedia included dozens of ways to prepare cow's udder. Making some of these delights, Pagel said, would be a challenge. Some recipes give measurements based on cost, referring, for example, to "two pennys' worth" of butter.

Weights and measures varied by region. One author's chart of equivalents equates one Prussian quart to three-fourths of a Baden quart - but 1 3/8 of a Bremen quart. Another author Pagel encountered gave only approximate amounts of ingredients because "students of the kitchen need to make their own way."

So what's the use of the cookbooks? To Pagel, they're a window into the role of women in Germany at that time. And they gave women a way to be published.

Pagel said she began to study them after reading a poem by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a literary giant of the time and her chief research interest.

In the poem, Goethe writes that women, having finished their domestic duties and feeling an urge to read, would "of course" pick up a cookbook, "hundreds of which our eager presses have given us."

Pagel began hunting for these cookbooks, but the only sizable collection she has found belongs to George Höltl. It contains 30,000 items of culinary interest and dates to the 15th century.

She doesn't yet know how many of the books were written by men and how many by women, because women often published anonymously, she said. And some of the authors refer to themselves only by initials.

But some books are definitely the work of men, she said, such as The Prudent Master Cook or The Well-Instructed Imperial Cook.

One male writer ponders about whether to include a chapter on cakes and pastries.

He doesn't want to be responsible for families of little means "baking themselves into the poorhouse," he writes.

Ultimately, Pagel said, he includes the recipes, ranking them by their appropriateness for households of different income levels.

Other books seemingly authored by men, Pagel said, may comprise recipes supplied by a spouse or by kitchen help.

Some of the women's cookbooks are unlike anything found today.

Pagel discovered one, she said, that provides a critique of the poetry of Goethe and another giant, Friedrich Schiller, before taking up broths. Still another is a monologue, in letter form, to "My Dear Friend Emilia."

Pagel said, "The author writes something like `To make this spinach dish, Emilia, you need first to make a good puff pastry of the kind I've often described to you.' The recipes are highly personalized - yet Emilia may be a fictional person."

Another cookbook writer blends with her recipes a saucy commentary on meeting men's expectations:
"Men are selfish creatures. ... Above all, [they] want to assert the philosophy of their stomach. 'What are you cooking today, my dear child?' is the question at breakfast, for men are all potlookers, even if they won't admit it."

For the most part, the cookbooks are produced by women of middle-class or higher standing, Pagel said. And their target tends to be the middle class, though later in the period she is studying, a few cookbooks are published in installments, for poorer women.

Not all of the cookbooks, Pagel said, contain flourishes like those described. "But most, if not all, reveal a lot more than just instructions for preparing food," she said.