Straight to the recipe Tasty tidbits The recipe on this page was prepared, together with Arabian pasties, clareit and medieval wafers, for the opening of an exhibition in the Utrecht University Museum on the medieval text Sidrac. The focus was on the Middle Dutch translation, Sidrac. There is also a late-medieval translation of this text, Sidrak…
With meat
‘Gilt poverty’
Straight to the recipe A very simple recipe from ‘the first Dutch television cook’ The information on this page concerns the first decennium of Dutch television. Information on the rather obscure and unique Dutch broadcasting system can be found on wikipedia. There were several member-based broadcasting organizations, each with their own religious or political ideology. Mentioned below…
Coulibiac with chicken, a recipe from Carême
Straight to the recipe Russian pastry from the classic French cuisine Coulibiac or coulbac is a traditional Russian pie that has been assimilated in to the classic French cuisine as early as the nineteenth century. The Russian name koulibiac has its origins in German: Kohlgeback (pastry with cabbage). Some versions of coulibiac do contain cabbage. The version with…
Game sauce à la Bolognese
With leftover meat from making game stock When you have made a concentrated game stock, you can sometimes save enough meat from the bones to make a tasty sauce. I had six kilo bones of hare and deer. When I had strained the stock I had almost one kilo of cooked meat. Being Dutch, I wouldn’t…
Soup with Sauerkraut? Delicious!
Straight to the recipe A Russian recipe from 1861 During my preparations for a presentation in October 2014 in the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam for a talk in the accompanying program for the exhibition Dining with the Czars, I experimented with several Russian nineteen-century recipes. I have adapted one of those recipes, a soup, for this page. The…
Traditional Game Sauce
Made with left-over meat from game stock When preparing a concentrated game stock, there is sometimes enough meat from the bones to make a tasty sauce. I had six kilo (twelve pounds) bones of hare and deer. When I had strained the stock I had almost one kilo of cooked meat. Being Dutch, I wouldn’t think…
Concentrated quail stock
Quails are small birds, related to partridges. Although -at least in the Netherlands- they are called ‘game birds’, they are actually bred at farms for their eggs and meat. They make a beautiful dark stock. The small birds could be regarded as the replacements of even smaller songbirds that used to be eaten (and in…
Creamy Oxtail Soup
This recipe for creamy oxtail soup is an addition to the recipe for clear oxtail soup. The recipe for the basic oxtail stock that is used in this recipe can also be found there. For 1 litre soup (4 to 5 portions); preparation 20 minutes. 1 liter oxtail stock meat of an oxtail, pulled in threads 40…
Vol-au-vent with ragoût
An old-fashioned first course This used to be a traditional first course in many Dutch Christmas meals. The most common version: ready-bought vol-au-vents, heated in the oven, a can of ragout, heated on the stove. The ingredients of canned ragout: water (what it contains most of is mentioned first), and less than 20% meat. Not just…
Mashed potatoes and endives
A very Dutch summer fare This dish, boiled potatoes and uncooked endives mashed together, was the favourite dish of my mother. We still prepare it on her birthday and her date of death (twenty years ago). So, for my family and me this is an emotional dish. My mother preferred meatballs with it, but I…
Queen’s Soup
Cream of Chicken Soup the Dutch way Three years ago I published the historical version of this soup on Coquinaria, from a seventeenth-century French cookbook. For that soup you needed partridges and cockscombs (not mushrooms, but the real thing), so I do not expect many people to have prepared that soup. That may be completely…
Sauce espagnole
Straigh to the recipe The first new historical recipe of 2018 concerns small chicken pies from nineteenth-century French cook Carême. The stuffing is seasoned with one spoonful of sauce espagnole. That will be easy, I thought, just look up what Carême has to say about this sauce and prepare it. But things were slightly more…
A medieval game pie with a curious name
Straight to the recipe Also known as ‘Turk’s head’ The name sounds very exciting, but it just means that the top of the pie was to be decorated. No cannibalism here. This is the perfect pie to use up any leftover game meat, but you can also use, as it says in the recipe, rabbits and fowl…
Omelette with quail and asparagus
Patina, a Roman dish This is a recipe from Antiquity.It is from the cookbook that inspired me in naming my website Coquinaria. It is called De Re Coquinaria, although it is better known as Apicius. More about his cookbook can be read at the recipe for Roman mussels. And another recipe for Roman patina (vegetarian) can be found…
Macaroni Pie
Straight to the recipe This recipe from the cookbook Allied Cookery is a lot like the oven dish from the Dutch Oorlogskookboek (‘War cookbook’): pasta, tomato, cheese, brown crust on top. This macaroni pie contains meat, as opposed to the vegetarian Dutch oven dish. This pie does not originate from the continent where the war was fought and where there…