And yet there are a great many of them – with meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, grains, pasta… And even with salted and smoked herring. At first glance, the combinations of ingredients in some of these rather piquant bakes seem quite incredible.
Salt Herring Bake
500 g potatoes boiled the day before and peeled, the fillets of two soaked herrings, 3 anchovies, 60 g butter, 1 onion, 3–4 eggs, ½ l sweet cream or milk, 4 tbsp breadcrumbs.
Peel the potatoes boiled in their jackets the day before and grate them coarsely. Chop the onion finely and sweat it a little. Mix the potatoes with the chopped herring and anchovies, add the onion with its butter, the egg yolks and the breadcrumbs, and pour in the cream or milk. Mix everything thoroughly and fold in the beaten egg whites. Season with salt and pepper if needed. Transfer the mixture to a greased dish and bake in the oven at 180° for 45 minutes.
Smoked Herring Bake
250 g spaghetti or rice, 4–5 hot-smoked herrings, 50 g butter, 1 small onion, 1–2 tbsp chopped herbs, 1 egg, 1 tsp salt, 1/8 l sour cream (30%), 1/8 l soured milk (prostokvasha), 2 tbsp breadcrumbs, 20 g grated cheese.
Cook the spaghetti until done, tip it into a colander and let it drain. Clean the smoked herring, break it into pieces and carefully remove all the bones. In the butter, first fry the finely chopped onion until light golden, then the pieces of herring. In a prepared baking dish, layer the spaghetti (or cooked rice), the pieces of fish with onion and the chopped herbs, pour over the eggs beaten with the salt, sour cream and soured milk, and sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and grated cheese. Bake in the oven at 180° for 30–40 minutes.
In East Prussia people loved making bakes – a simple and economical dish. According to the official version, it was borrowed from the French. Exactly when is not known. One day, it seems, some skilful cook simply had the brilliant idea of "reviving" an uneaten meal: putting the leftovers together in one dish, pouring beaten egg and sour cream over them and putting it in the oven. The dish appeared on the tables of the Russian nobility at the end of the 18th century thanks to the advent of the Russian stove.
Originally, all kinds of food left over from the previous meal went into bakes. Whatever had not been eaten at supper could, in "revived" form, make a very respectable breakfast. In time, bakes graced the festive table too.
Bakes were made from raw and cooked ingredients. Housewives experimented with different ingredients and sauces. And every new culinary invention was, as was only proper, carefully written down in the family cookbook. Here are a few recipes by Erna Bäcker from Domnau (now the village of Domnovo, Pravdinsk District), dated 1910.
Rice Bake with Tomatoes
Cook long-grain rice in salted water (so that it does not go mushy), put it into a baking dish, surround it with tomato wedges and pour over a sauce made according to the following recipe:
30 g butter, 15 g wheat flour, ¼ l milk, 1 egg yolk, 1 egg white, salt and pepper to taste.
Melt the butter, add the sifted flour and pour in the cold milk. Cook the sauce (stirring constantly so that it does not burn) and let it cool. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir the raw egg yolk into the sauce, then the stiffly beaten egg white. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes at 200° with top and bottom heat.
I should say straight away that Erna Bäcker did not specify the quantities of rice and tomatoes. But I don't think it will be too hard to judge the right proportions by eye.
Celeriac Bake
2 medium celeriac bulbs or 1 large one, 35 g butter, 30 g wheat flour, ½ l vegetable stock or milk, salt to taste, 5 g dried (flaked) yeast.
Wash and peel the celeriac and cut it into thin slices. Make a (classic) white sauce to pour over it. To do this, toast the wheat flour on a baking tray at 200 degrees. Then melt 15 g of the butter, add the toasted flour and pour in the milk or vegetable stock. Cook it well so that the taste of raw flour disappears, and add a little salt – not so much as to overpower the flavour of the celeriac. Grease the baking dish with the rest of the butter, lay out the celeriac slices, pour the sauce over them and sprinkle the yeast flakes on top. This will give the bake a light, loose texture.
Bread Bake
2 tbsp raisins, rum, 500 g grated stale wholemeal bread, 8 tbsp ground walnuts, 1 tbsp grated lemon zest, candied rhubarb, butter, 2 eggs, ½ l milk, wild strawberries (strawberries) or bilberries, icing sugar.
Mix the breadcrumbs with the raisins soaked in rum, the ground nuts and the lemon zest. Grease a dish generously with butter and spread a 2 cm layer of the bread mixture in it. Top with a layer of berries, then another layer of the bread mixture, and so on until the dish is full. Make a custard from the eggs and milk mixed together. Set the baking dish in a water bath and cook for 40 minutes. It is best to cover the dish with foil while it cooks and to leave the foil on for a while after the bake is done.
The dish is served in portions, topped with a sauce made from puréed strawberries and bilberries. To make it, wash and dry the berries, crush them and rub them through a sieve. Mix with icing sugar and warm gently in a pan until the sugar dissolves, but do not let it boil, so that the vitamins are preserved.
Curd cheese, dessert and vegetable bakes were particularly popular in East Prussia.
Curd Cheese Bake
¼ l milk, 50 g semolina, 200 g curd cheese, 100 g (seedless) grapes, 50 g ground walnuts, 1 level tsp grated lemon zest, a pinch of cinnamon, 4 eggs, butter for greasing the dish.
Cook the semolina in the milk, let it cool and mix it with the curd cheese. Then mix in the grapes, walnuts and cinnamon. Add the beaten egg whites, then the yolks. Beat the mixture well and transfer it to a buttered dish. Bake for 1 hour at 180° with top and bottom heat. The bake can be served with a delicate vanilla sauce.
To make it you will need:
½ l milk, ½ vanilla pod or ½ sachet vanilla sugar, salt on the tip of a knife, 30–40 g sugar, 10 g potato starch, 15 g wheat flour, 1–2 egg yolks.
Bring the milk to the boil over a low heat with the vanilla and salt. When it has cooled a little, pour in the starch mixed with water (don't forget to take the vanilla pod out of the milk). Then add the egg yolks mixed with a little milk and the flour (first rub this mixture through a sieve) and set over a very low heat (on no account let it boil!). Then let the sauce cool and pour it over the bake.
Almond Bake
125 g chopped sweet almonds, 4 bitter almonds, 125 g sugar, 4–5 eggs, 45 g breadcrumbs, 1 tbsp rum.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until frothy, add the breadcrumbs and almonds, then the rum and the beaten egg whites, and transfer the mixture to a dish. Bake for 30–45 minutes at a medium heat. The finished dish can be topped with a fruit sauce, made in the same way as for the bread bake.
Pumpkin Bake
750 g pumpkin flesh, 5 tart apples, 90 g butter, 3 tbsp sugar, 1 sachet vanilla sugar, 3 tbsp rum, 125 g chopped almonds, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 2 tbsp icing sugar.
Chop the pumpkin flesh finely. Peel and core the apples and chop them finely. Grease a baking dish with some of the butter, layer the pumpkin and apple in it, sprinkle with the sugar and vanilla sugar, drizzle with rum and dot with pieces of the remaining butter. Bake for 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 180°.
Before serving, sprinkle the bake with the almonds mixed with cinnamon, then with icing sugar.
Sauerkraut Bake
750 g potatoes boiled in their jackets, 500 g sauerkraut, 3 tbsp fat, 1 tart apple, a pinch of sugar, 250 g salt meat or bacon, 1/8 l sour cream, 50 g smoked fatback, breadcrumbs and grated cheese for sprinkling, 1 tbsp butter.
Boil the potatoes until not quite done, peel them and slice them into rounds. Braise the sauerkraut briefly with the fat, the salt meat (bacon) cut into small pieces, the flesh of the apple and a pinch of sugar. Grease a dish with butter and layer the potatoes and sauerkraut in it. The top layer must always be potatoes. Pour the sour cream over everything, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and grated cheese and dot with small pieces of butter. Bake for 45 minutes in a well-heated oven (200°).
In this way you can bake just about anything, giving ordinary ingredients a unique new flavour.
Sources:
Doennigs Kochbuch.
Alte Familienrezepte aus Ostpreußen. Harald Saul.
Das Beste aus der Ostpreussischen Kueche. Susanne Rohner.
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
