Straight to the recipe Medieval pasties with bone marrow In 2006 I acquired the book Bones by Australian chef de cuisine Jennifer McLagan. The front cover has a splendid picture of roasted marrow bones. This led to my browsing through the editions of medieval cook books on my bookshelves to see whether anything interesting was done with marrow…
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Cranberry-walnutbread
This is a really festive bread. It’s tasty, and looks merry with the little red berries. I like eating it with blue cheese, but with just butter it already is a treat. This recipe is inspired by the dried cranberries that are suddenly appearing in stores in November. And I love maple syrup, especially in…
The original Waldorf Salad
Straight to the recipe An American classic from the nineteenth century Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, cooks and maître d’s who served at the courts of kings and nobles set the tone in culinary developments. But this all changed with the rise of restaurants and -later- hotels. Who today knows the men or…
Medieval applesauce from England
Greasy! Elsewhere on Coquinaria I have published a recipe for Apple Sauce for Lent. On this page is an English recipe with different versions for meat days and fish days, called apple moys. The Dutch name for apple sauce is appelmoes, so to me (being Dutch) that sounds very familiar. This apple sauce is special…
Cook’s Salmon Salad
Straight to the recipe Simply delicious A delicious recipe amalgamated from two nineteenth century cookbooks written by ‘kitchen maids’. In eighteenth century England the housewife or her housekeeper ruled the cookbooks, in The Netherlands it was the keukenmeid (litt. kitchen maid), which is not quite the same as the housekeeper but more a female cook. However, I will use that in the translations…
Red cabbage the Dutch way
Straight to the recipe A nineteenth-century recipe with apples and apple syrup Originally I had planned a completely different recipe for this month, but then I noticed this old-fashioned recipe for red cabbage in a Dutch cookery book from the middle of the nineteenth century: Betje, de goedkoope keukenmeid. (Betje, the Cheap Cook). It is the…
Peperkoek, the Dutch version of gingerbread
A delicious treat This ‘pepper cake’ is very popular in the Netherlands, and is known under several other names, like ontbijtkoek (breakfast cake) and kruidkoek (spice cake), or connected to regions like Groninger koek or Deventer koek. It is promoted by the food industry as a healthy snack, because it contains no fat. However, sweeteners like honey and sugar constitute more than 50% of…
Pickle Herring, the ‘forgotten fish’
It is time to change that! In February 2016 I organized a cookery course for the first time in nearly ten years, with members of the re-enactment group Het Woud der Verwachting (litt: ‘the forest of expectation’, after a historical novel by the Dutch author Hella Haasse). The menu was in concordance with the date of the course:…
Cheese pie with pears
Straight to the recipe The recipe for this pie with Brie cheese, pear and egg dates from the middle of the sixteenth century. The source is the Nyeuwen Coockboeck (‘New cookbook’) by the Antwerp physician Gheeraert Vorselman. Although the stuffing is prepared with pears and sugar, this is not a sweet pie. In those days, sugar was…
Dutch muffins with speculaas spices
There are two kinds of muffins, English ones, and American muffins. Muffins originate from England, but are also very popular in the United States. They were first mentioned in the eighteenth century.The English muffin is made from a yeast-dough that is baked on a griddle on the stove instead of in the oven. After baking…
Fish Fumet
A good beef stock is made with meat bones, a good fish fumet (concentrated stock) needs fish bones. Ask the fishmonger to collect the bones when he is filleting, you’ll need about one kilogram. The bones have to be from lean fish like sole, halibut, plaice, flounder, etc., no bones from salmon or maquerel. By…
Strawberye
Straight to the recipe Medieval pudding with strawberries from England Medieval recipes for summer fruit are rare. Strawberries, raspberries, brambles, blue- and blackberries: they were mostly eaten as we like to eat them, ‘straight from the bush’. Of course you do not need a recipe for that. According to the medieval health regime the eating…
Medieval mustard
Straight to the recipe Mustard has always been a popular condiment. Mustard is made from the seeds of several species of the brassica-family (cabbage). From some varieties the leaves can be eaten, and the seeds not only serve to make mustard, but can also be pressed to yield a culinary oil, or distilled to make…
Roman sourdough bread
The Romans knew several kinds of bread. Mostly these breads were made with sourdough. The meal that was used was wheat, spelt, barley or rice. Even ground pulses were used. In the second century before Christ bread started to displace pulses as basic food. Bread was eaten every day, at every meal. This explains the…
Chinese tea-eggs
Decorative and delicate in taste This is a very special way to serve hardboiled eggs. You prepare them in advance, all you need to do is peel them before serving them. The result is beautiful marbled eggs with the subtle taste of spices. Do not be put off by the long boiling time, the eggs…