Stuffed eggs from early sixteenth century The oldest extant Dutch cookbook in print dates from 1514. It is titled Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen (A noble cookery book). The recipe on this page is taken from this book wich has 175 recipes in all. Stuffed eggs have allways been a popular dish. This particular recipe is called ghecloven nonnen,…
First course
Cooking with clay
Wrapped fish, baked on a coal fire Archaeologists and archaeobotanists are experts in reconstructing cooking methods and ingredients that were possibly used during Prehistoric times. However, a ‘prehistoric cuisine’ does not exist. What was on the menu depended on the millennium, the time of the year, the location and available resources, and perhaps also on…
Pyke in Galentyne
Straight to the recipe A medieval feast for nose, eyes and palate Sauces are an important part of the medieval kitchen. Not just because they taste good, but it was the best way to prepare the main ingredient of a dish in such a way that it was as healthy as possible according to the…
Elegant mushroom pies
Straight to the recipe A fourteenth-century dish from France When I give a talk on medieval cuisine I always serve a sampling of medieval dishes and spiced wine. The recipe on this page never fails to be a success. The pasties were originally served during the first course of a medieval banquet, but in a…
Chawettys – Pies for a king
Straight to the recipe Pork pies with Stilton cheese Not so many decades ago, English cuisine stood for bland taste: glassy potatoes, boiled lamb and peas as large and hard as marbles. However, in the Late Middle Ages the English had one of the most interesting cuisines of Europe. Perhaps this was due to the…
medieval eggs with mustard
Straight to the recipe ‘Souppe en civé’ Eggs are very prominent in medieval cuisine, they are used as thickening agent in sauces and stuffings, as ‘guilding’ (roast meat and pasties were pasted with egg yolks), and of course there were dishes with cooked eggs, fried eggs, and omelettes. Medieval recipes for stuffed eggs can be found here and…
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…
Fish with ‘sauce ramolade’
Straight to the recipe A light dish from the court of Louis XIV Sometimes food from the past seems very modern, such as this elegant and simple fish dish from the seventeenth century. The source of the recipe is Le cuisinier royal et bourgeois by François Massialot. More on the author and his book…
Traditional Dutch potato salad
Russian Salad the Dutch way I suppose Russian Salad is a popular dish all over the world, but I wonder whether it is as connected with festive holidays as in the Netherlands, where it is called Hussar’s Salad (‘Huzarensalade’). It is a traditional dish on New Year’s Eve, presented as a clock with the hands…
Stuffed eggs with mint
Straight to the recipe A medieval first course from Germany I am lucky with my neighbours. At the moment, I live next door to the core of the musical group EnsembLeChatNoir, who give beautiful – and sometimes multimedia – concerts. At my previous house there was also an artistic neighbour, a cermist. She is from Germany, and…
Arabian pasties
Straight to the recipe Just like the Arabian meatballs, these pasties were presented at the opening of the exhibition of Sidrac in 2006. The pasties are stuffed with eggplant from the Anonymous Andalusian Cookery book, and spinach from the Kitāb al-Ţabīkh-al-Baghdadī. Both cookbooks date from the thisrteenth century. More on the Andalusian cookbook can be read at the…
A medieval evergreen
Very, very healthy! In Asterix in Britain, the heroes Asterix and Obelix’ first meal on British soil is eaten in a pub called ‘The Jolly Boar’. Obelix is deeply disappointed, his favourite boar has not been roasted, but boiled. To make matters even worse, it is served in a green mint sauce. Boring. Had Obelix lived fourteen centuries later,…
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…
Tortelli in brodo
Straight to the recipe An Italian recipe from the sixteenth century This is a real classic from the Italian kitchen: stuffed pasta in broth. The sixteenth century recipe prescribes the use of meat broth. If you replace this by a good vegetable broth, the result is a very tasty vegetarian dish. It is best not…