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…
With meat
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…
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…
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…
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…
Dutch pea soup
Snert, traditional winterfare Dutch cuisine has few internationally known highlights. Gouda cheese is one them, maatjesharing (young herring eaten slightly salted but essentially raw) is another. Snert or pea soup is also an icon of Dutch cuisine. As with all traditional recipes Dutch pea soup is made in many different ways. It is an ideal…
Chicken stock
To the list with recipes for stock and soup Basic recipe – 3½ liter (3 UK quarts, 3.7 US quarts) Commercial chicken stock is often a rather pale liquid. The taste is salty and artificial. Just try making this chicken stock and taste how a simple chicken broth should REALLY taste. To begin with: chicken…
Mallard with onion sauce
Straight to the recipe An English recipe from the fifteenth century A recipe from an English manuscript from the middle of the fifteenth century, Harleian 4016 from the library of the British Museum. The cookbook opens with the menu of a banquet that was served to king Richard II and the Duke of Lancaster on September 23 1387 in…
Pasties with sweetbread
Straight to the recipe What Johann Sebastian Bach might have eaten in Leipzig The connection between the pasties and the famous German baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is tenuous; a few years after Susanna Eger had published her cookbook (in 1706), J.S. Bach accepted the situation of cantor in the Lutheran Thomaskirche in Leipzig. He would work there from 1723 until his…