Speculaas or speculoos is one of the Dutch culinary specialties. It is a spiced cookie, made with wooden forms or moulds. They are typically winterfood, and especially associated with the feast of ‘Sint Nicolaas’ or Saint Nicholas, the original Santa Claus. This feast is celebrated on 5 or 6 December. Speculaas is very old, the…
Sweet pastry
Sluberkens
Straight to the recipe Medieval pasties with bone marrow In 2006 I acquired the book Bones by Australian chef de cuisine Jennifer McLagan. The front cover has a splendid picture of roasted marrow bones. This led to my browsing through the editions of medieval cook books on my bookshelves to see whether anything interesting was done with marrow…
Cranberry-walnutbread
This is a really festive bread. It’s tasty, and looks merry with the little red berries. I like eating it with blue cheese, but with just butter it already is a treat. This recipe is inspired by the dried cranberries that are suddenly appearing in stores in November. And I love maple syrup, especially in…
Peperkoek, the Dutch version of gingerbread
A delicious treat This ‘pepper cake’ is very popular in the Netherlands, and is known under several other names, like ontbijtkoek (breakfast cake) and kruidkoek (spice cake), or connected to regions like Groninger koek or Deventer koek. It is promoted by the food industry as a healthy snack, because it contains no fat. However, sweeteners like honey and sugar constitute more than 50% of…
Dutch muffins with speculaas spices
There are two kinds of muffins, English ones, and American muffins. Muffins originate from England, but are also very popular in the United States. They were first mentioned in the eighteenth century.The English muffin is made from a yeast-dough that is baked on a griddle on the stove instead of in the oven. After baking…
Almond paste
Rich and sweet Almond paste has been around since medieval times. Hardly anyone makes it at home nowadays. It is for sale in stores, sometimes with substitutes as beans or apricot kernels instead of almonds. There is nothing wrong with that, but the original paste is with almonds, so here is a recipe with them….
Medieval apple fritters
Straight to the recipe In the Netherlands apple fritters are traditional food on New Year’s Eve. I have chosen an English recipe from the fifteenth century to see how it would have tasted in the past. It could just as well have been any other medieval cookery book, as apple fritters were popular food in the Middle Ages. Fritters on…
Wafers with whipped cream
Medieval Dutch wafers Straight to the recipe Wafers are delicious and easy to make. Actually they are a kind of ‘pressed pancakes’. According to The Oxford Companion to Food wafers are thin and crisp, waffles are thicker and made with yeast. The recipe on this page is for thin wafers. The miniature is from the Velislav Picture Bible, which was created…
Jane Austen’s Apple Pie
Straight to the recipe Or: Plagiarism and Hackwork Who does not love apple pie? At least, good apple pie, because there are tearooms in museums or train stations where I have seen very sad, sometimes even partially defrosted prefab apple pie. Like apple sauce, apple pie is one of the basic, primeval dishes of European cuisine (here is a medieval…
Rhubarb, the reverse tomato
Two recipes for early summer Straight to the recipe Rhubarb is a culinary eccentric, the counterpart of the tomato. Much like the tomato is a fruit that we treat as a vegetable, the rhubarb is actually a vegetable that we treat as a fruit. However, this has only been the case since the last two…
Moutayes
Straight to the recipe Moutayes are sweet fritters from the Mauritian cuisine. This recipe is published with the recipe for Vindaye, Mauritian fish curry. See that page for information on the history of Mauritian cuisine. In case you didn’t know: the isle Mauritius is situated in the Indian Ocean, East of Madagascar. Grandmother’s kitchen As with the vindaye, the…
Fake Fish
Straight to the recipe Medieval apple pie for Lent Lent – The fishy season In the Middle Ages the catholic church prescribed what was on the daily menu. Each week counted at least one day, and more often three or even four days (depending on where and when in medieval Europe) during which no meat…