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…
Main dish
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…
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…
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…
Tuna with mustard crust
Straight to the recipe A spicy Walloon dish from the sixteenth century Last year I published a recipe for mushroom pie from Lancelot de Casteau, the sixteenth-century cook for several bishops of the Prince-Bishopric Liège, and I promised to revisit this cookbook soon. Not a lot is known about Lancelot de Casteau. He was born in Mons, lived…
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…
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…
Stuffed meatballs in lettuce
Straight to the recipe And about the history of a typically Dutch snack, the ‘frikandel’ The original recipe on this page is called Om Frickedillen in Krop-salaet te maken (to make frickedillen in lettuce). According to Dutch dictionaries, a ‘ frikadel’ is obsolete for meatball, and ‘frikandel’ is vernacular and incorrect. The Frickedillen from the recipe below are indeed meatballs, prepared…
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…
Chicken with spring vegetables
Straight to the recipe A recipe from the First Stadtholderless Period On 30 April 2013 Dutch Queen Beatrix abdicated from the throne and Willem-Alexander was inaugurated as King of the Netherlands. For the first time in 123 years the Netherlands have a king instead of a queen. As a counterweight to the excessive monarchist manifestations,…
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….
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…
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…