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
Medieval goose
Straight to the recipe An English recipe from the fourteenth century Turkey seems to be the bird par excellence for a Christmas dinner. Personally I do not like turkey. The meat is rather tasteless and much too dry. Presumably it is exactly that neutral taste and low-fat meat which make turkey such a popular…
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…
Vegetarian cutlets from World War I
Straight to the recipe Recently a book was published containing the biography of the Dutch chef Iwan Kriens (1871- ca 1957) who had a very succesful career in England. To honour the occasion, this page contains a recipe from The Victory Cookery Book, which he wrote with Mrs C.S. (Dorothy) Peel in 1918. Kriens already had…
Hot-smoked cod with mustard-cilantro sauce
A Chinese recipe Elsewhere on Coquinaria is the recipe for hot-smoked salmon. Here is another recipe for hot-smoked fish, but this time from China. The fifference with ‘Western’ smoking is the smoke-medium: not woodchips or sawdust, but tea leaves with rice, sugar and spices. The fish is not cured but marinated and steamed before smoking. When…
Salmon in red wine-sauce
Straight to the recipe A recipe from the French Golden Age The first really new cookbooks since the Middle Ages did not appear before 1650. In France these cookbooks were the first onset to the development of the classical French “haute cuisine”. Up til the middle of the seventeenth century medieval classics Le MĂ©nagier de Paris and Le…
Fish with leeks for Lent
Straight to the recipe Herring, often in preserved form, is very important food for medieval people. During the fifteenth century, when the recipe on this page was written, one could buy very salty pickle herring, dried herring en smoked herring. The English have, just like the Dutch, several kinds of smoked herring, like kipper, bloater…
Roman tuna
Straight to the recipe Great with stewed cucumber Every year around the first day of May there is a Romeinenweek or ‘Week of the Romans’ in the Netherlands, when Roman heritage is put in the spotlight with festivals, events and activities. This year I was there on April 29 at a recently discovered Roman army marching…
Macaroni with tomatoes
Straight to the recipe From the Oorlogs-kookboek (‘War-cookbook’) from 1918 This is a Dutch recipe from World War I, also known as the Great War. The peoples of all the combatant nations dealt with hunger, food shortage and rationing (see here). The Netherlands remained neutral … The Netherlands did not participate in the war. At the…