Warming, loving, substantial food While I am writing this (2 December 2010) it’s freezing cold outside, the canal in front of my house is frozen, and everything is covered with a layer of snow. Apparently I live near a salt depot, for in the last half hour I have counted five gritting lorries loaded with…
Main dish
Tourte de fonges
Straight to the recipe Mushroom pie from Lancelot de Casteau This mushroom pie from 1604 is much more modern than the Ménagier’s from the fourteenth century. No spices and sugar, but herbs to bring the stuffing to taste. The recipe comes from the Ouverture de cuisine, published in 1604 by Lancelot de Casteau. He was, according…
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…
Chicken with redcurrant sauce
Straight to the recipe A bright summer-sauce from the sixteenth century Blackbirds, thrushes, finches – who doesn’t enjoy hearing these beautifully singing birds? Except of course if you happen to grow currants in your garden. Then suddenly these birds turn into voracious monsters that plunder the bushes before you’ve had the chance to harvest a…
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…
Whole smoked chicken
The recipe on this page is taken from a cookbook that I have had in my possession for years, but never used to cook out of. It seemed too much trouble. The book: Smoke and Spice: Cooking with Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue. written by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison. Over 400 pages of…
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…
Mulahwaja
Straight to the recipe A recipe from 1001 nights There are few Europeans who can read and understand Arabic, let alone medieval Arabic, and I am not one of them. That is why the translation in English of the tenth century Kitāb al-Ţabīkh of al-Warrāq from Nawal Nasrallah is so valuable (also literally, the book is quite…
Tasty hedgehogs
Straigh to the recipe A medieval subtlety There really are recipes for preparing hedgehog, but fear not: the recipe on this page is without hedgehog meat, it only looks like a hedgehog. The dish is a medieval one, for a savoury ‘hedgehog’ with pork. The extra recipe is from the eighteenth century, a sweet version with marzipan….
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…
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…
Fish curry from Mauritius
Straight to the recipe “You ate all the dodo’s!” I’ve heard that remark several times in the summer of 2006 during my vacation on Mauritius. It was said with a smile, by friendly people, but still … Yes, I am Dutch, and “we” Dutch people are responsible for the extinction of that peculiar flightless bird…
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…
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…
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…