Disgustingly healthy! Apple sauce is a medieval relic. It was a popular dish, considering the many recipes for apple sauce that can be found in medieval cookbooks all over Europe. Some of those recipes are rather unusual, like the following recipe for apple sauce with … fish liver! The recipe’s title is ‘appelmoes in de vastene’ (apple…
Recipes for Lent
Lent is the period from Ash Wednesday (which comes after the ending of Carnival at Shrove Tuesday) to Easter. These forty days (Sundays not included) represent the time that Jesus spent in the desert being tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1-11). All meat and dairy produce was banned from the table during the Middle Ages, but fish was allowed. So remember that medieval Lent was NOT vegetarian.
In early modern times the rules were relaxed: butter was now also allowed during Lent. However, in seventeenth-century France one day in the year was even more strict than medieval Lent: on Good Friday even fish was banned.
On this page are links to historical recipes for Lent.
Medieval onion stew
Straight to the recipe The recipe for this nourishing dish has survived in several medieval English manuscripts. Although it is not stated explicitly, the dish is typically meant for Lent. It contains olive oil and almond milk, and lacks any meat or dairy products. The main ingredient are onions. In the picture a man and…
Rice Pudding for Lent
Straight to the recipe This fourteenth-century recipe is especially for Lent, the period between carnival and Easter. Meat and dairy products were banned from the table (see the recipe for Fake Fish), and inventive cooks would create delicate dishes within these limitations, even though meals during Lent should be sober occasions. This sweet almond-rice pudding with raisins…
Jacobin sops for Good Friday
In the introduction to the recipe for Pomegranate Salad I mentioned the only day that the (catholic) French alle ate vegetarian. That is really something special, because ordering a vegetarian dish in an average French restaurant usually results in raised eyebrows and a rather plain meatless dish. The recipe on this page and the recipe…
Spinach Pie
This the third recipe for Good Friday. The other recipes are Pomegranate Salad and Jacobin Sops. If one grows spinach in the kitchen garden, or is from an older generation, one might remember the sharp-edged seeds of some varieties of spinach. Spinach had to be washed very thoroughly to remove all those unpleasant seeds. Nowadays…
Eggs with gooseberries
Straight to the recipe An odd but tasty dish Recently I published an article in the periodical De Boekenwereld (The Book World) on Roman Catholic recipes in the eighteenth-century cookery book De Volmaakte Hollandsche Keuken-Meid (The perfect Dutch Kitchen Maid). The indirect cause of that article was a recipe I published on Coquinaria a year ago, a Dish for Lent with prunes…
Vegetarian stock for Lent
Recipes from the seventeenth century During Lent, between carnival and Easter, the catholic church (and after the Reformation several protestant churches as well) restricted the faithful to a meatless diet. During the Middle Ages all diary products were also banned during Lent, later the use of butter was permitted. Almonds were used instead of meat…
Stockfish with peas, apple and raisins
Straight to the recipe An ode to dried food A very medieval tasting recipe. It’s an ode to dried food, except the onion all ingredients are dried. This makes it an excellent dish for end of winter. The recipe was meant for fishdays or for Lent. If you prepared it for a fishday you could use butter, but in Lent when…
Pickle Herring, the ‘forgotten fish’
It is time to change that! In February 2016 I organized a cookery course for the first time in nearly ten years, with members of the re-enactment group Het Woud der Verwachting (litt: ‘the forest of expectation’, after a historical novel by the Dutch author Hella Haasse). The menu was in concordance with the date of the course:…
Medieval blancmange with fish
Straight to the recipe Dainty and delicate This recipe, the oldest redaction of which is dating from the end of the fourteenth century, is a typical dish for a fish day, or even Lent. Many people think of a medieval meal as a table laden with meat and fowl, but the truth is that on…
Mock eggs for Lent
Just for fun Straight to the recipe This an extra recipe with the Medieval coloured easter Eggs. During Lent, between carnival and Easter, no eggs were eaten. But sometimes eggs did appear on the table, as a joke. These were mock eggs, made with pike roe (also eggs, but from fish, so these were permitted) or…
The day all France was vegetarian
Straight to the recipe Jean-Louis Flandrin, who died in 2001, wrote in his posthumously published book L’Ordre des mets that the reformation had such rapid succes in North-West Europe because of the prohibition of butter by the catholic church during Lent. Southern Europe used olive oil anyway, but in the North-West suet, lard and butter were the…
Fish with leeks for Lent
Straight to the recipe Herring, often in preserved form, is very important food for medieval people. During the fifteenth century, when the recipe on this page was written, one could buy very salty pickle herring, dried herring en smoked herring. The English have, just like the Dutch, several kinds of smoked herring, like kipper, bloater…
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…