Straight to the recipe A bright summer-sauce from the sixteenth century Blackbirds, thrushes, finches – who doesn’t enjoy hearing these beautifully singing birds? Except of course if you happen to grow currants in your garden. Then suddenly these birds turn into voracious monsters that plunder the bushes before you’ve had the chance to harvest a…
With meat
Real Dutch ‘Slavink’
A very special meatball This meat dish is typically Dutch. I have not been able to find an exact translation of the name slavink, which derives from slagvink, a singing finch. Some Dutch/English dictionaries translate it with kromeski, but since that is dipped in batter and deep-fried, it is not the same dish. If you want to know how…
Herb soup with potato dumplings
Straight to the recipe A delicate herald of Spring The text for this recipe is from a cookbook from the nineteenth century, but in fact the recipe is older. In Le cuisinier from Pierre de Lune (1656) there is a ‘potage the santé’ with sorrel, purslane, chervil and herbs, and no doubt there are other comparable recipes. Two…
Capon with caper-sauce
Straight to the recipe Prepared ‘à la braise’ A delicious dish from the nineteenth century that is easy to prepare. How delicious exactly, depends on the poultry (a real capon -mouthwatering but expensive-, a good poularde -very tasty as well-, or the watery pale poor industrial chicken -bleh-) and the stock you use (homemade chicken stock or a…
Kale with chestnuts and groats
Straight to the recipe A recipe from the cook of Stadtholder Willem IV The recipe on this page is from Le cuisinier moderne, written by the French cook Vincent La Chapelle (1690 or 1703-1745). He wrote his book first in English, while he was in the service of the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope. The…
Jacobin Sops
Straight to the recipe Take 200 capons … This is a recipe from the delightful cookbook Du fait de cuysine by Maître Chiquart. He was a cook in the service of Amadeus VIII (1383-1451, also known as the last Antipope Felix V from 1439 to 1449), count and first duke of Savoy. Amadeus was a regular guest at the…
A visit to the butcher
Recently I joined Carolina Verhoeven, who until 2010 owned the Culinary Historical Museum in Appelscha (in the North of The Netherlands) and is now head of the Culinary Heritage Centre in a visit to the biological butcher shop of Bernard Roosendaal in Drachtstercompagnie. Slagerij Roosendaal was a biological/organic butcher’s. They also had live stock, and functioned…
Veal Mortadella
Straight to the recipe A fifteenth-century antipasto Modern Mortadella is an Italian sausage originating from Bologna, with pink meat, speckled with little chunks of porkfat, peppercorns and pistacchios and/or olives. The sausage is cooked and lightly smoked. The pinkish hue is caused by saltpetre. Mortadella is imitated a lot throughout the world. The American imitation is called…
Chicken breast with blackberry sauce
A fifteenth-century recipe from Italy Straight to the recipe The colour of food is important to the way in which we experience it. Food wich is green, golden, white or red is thought of as tasty food. Food wich looks blue is less attractive. Ingredients wich are blue-coloured by nature are very few. All that…
Lucanian sausages
Straight to the recipe An ancient Roman delicacy In June 2012 I gave a talk about Roman Food at the Roman Festival in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. This inspired me to try my hand at preparing Lucanicae, one of the recipes for sausages in the Roman cookery book De re coquinaria. I have written more on this book in my notes on other…
Medieval stuffed chicken
Straight to the recipe Pullis iuvenis in tempore estivali This summer I was experimenting with roasting whole chickens on the barbecue, so of course I searched for a medieval recipe too. That was easy, in medieval cuisine roast fowl is standard fare for nobles, and I chose a recipe from the Tractatus de modo preparandi et…
Real Dutch kroket and bitterbal
The picture shows my daughter and some of her friends at her birthday party many years ago (in 2002). As part of the festivities they were preparing their own meal, the standard birthday fare for a lot of Dutch children in the past: kroketten, French fries and apple sauce, but everything made from scratch. They…
Medieval bread with fennel and lard
Straight to the recipe Recipes for bread from the distant past are rare. The recipe on this page was inspired by the description in the Nyeuwen cooc boeck (New Cook Book) by Gheeraert Vorselman (edition Cockx-Indestege 1971, see bibliography). Actually this is a description of a kind of flat, unleavened bread, but I added yeast…
Salade Russe the Russian Way
Straight to the recipe A recipe from 1866 The choice for this recipe is the result of a lecture I gave at the Museum Hermitage in Amsterdam in October 2014. The lecture was complementary to the exhibition Dining with the Czars, which is open for visitors until April 2015. At the end of my presentation all the guests…
Russian stock
Meat stock from the nineteenth century Soup is an important part of the Eastern-European kitchen. In the Gift for young housewives, a Russian cookery book that was first published in 1861, there is a recipe for basic bouillon that can be used for all kinds of soup. The recipes for the soups themselves contain variations…