Straight to the recipe A familiar recipe with a twist One of the first modern recipes I published in the Dutch section of this website was a cucumber salad. That was back in 2002. In the following years I kept adding recipes to this page which eventually contained cucumber salads from all over the world. This is the first historical recipe for cucumber…
Side dish
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…
Stuffed oranges
Straight to the recipe A feast for the eye This recipe is from the great Antonin Carême, the Frenchman who started as street urchin on the streets of Paris and became a cook for kings, czars and other great persons. More information on Carême is on the page with the recipe for soufflé. And like the…
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…
Crème brûlée
Straight to the recipe An all-time favourite from the seventeenth century Crème brûlée is one of the most popular desserts. That probably has to do with the titillating contrast between the cold, creamy custard and the hard, hot layer of burned sugar. This dish should be prepared with care, because it can easily turn out wrong….
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…
Mustard-dill sauce
Very good with fish For example with hot-smoked salmon I got this recipe nearly forty years ago from someone who was married to a Swede. For about 2.5 decilter (1 cup) sauce; preparation 10 minutes. 2 Tbsp mustard 2 Tbsp sugar 2 Tbsp white vinegar 6½ Tbsp sunflower oil (or other neutral-tasting vegetable oil) 6½…
Imperial cucumber
Straight to the recipe Great with Roman tuna Pliny the Elder (23 – 79 AD) describes in his encyclopedia Naturalis historia everything that live and exists on Earth. Originally there were 102 volumes, but unfortunately only 37 have survived. These 37 volumes include the ones on animals and plants, so we can still read what Pliny had to…
Royal peas
Well alright then, just the one! Straight to the recipe Garden peas were an absolute hype in the seventeenth century. They were enjoyed much the same way as we nowadays eat chocolate, like a delicious sin. Madame de Maintenon, mistress of Louis XIV wrote in 1696: “Il y a des dames qui, après avoir soupé, et bien soupé, trouvent…
Arab meatballs with aubergines
Straight to the recipe During the caliphate of the Abbasides (749-1258 AD) the Arab cuisine was at its prime. In its heydays the Caliphate spread from modern Tunesia to India. The culinary arts were highly regarded. Poets composed works on their favorite dishes, cookbooks were dedicated to the caliphs. There were also scientific works on the…
Aubergines in aubergine sauce
This recipe for aubergines (eggplants) with aubergine sauce was chosen because of the possible connection with an Arab recipe with aubergines. It is from an Italian cookbook from the end of the fifteenth century that has been published by Terence Scully as The Neapolitan recipe collection. ‘Cuoco Napoletano’ (see bibliography). The Southern part of Italy has been…
Fake Fish
Straight to the recipe Medieval apple pie for Lent Lent – The fishy season In the Middle Ages the catholic church prescribed what was on the daily menu. Each week counted at least one day, and more often three or even four days (depending on where and when in medieval Europe) during which no meat…
Roman broccoli
A recipe for broccoli from De re coquinaria, a Roman cookbook with recipes from the 1st to 4th centuries. If a vegetable like broccoli already existed, it was probably something that looked like Brassica rapa var. Cymosa, also known as Cima di rapa or rapini (broccoli raab): thin stalks with leaves and small flowerbuds. Where I live (the Netherlands), Cima di…