Straight to the recipe A sixteenth-century Dutch recipe This winter salad for parsnips is taken from a Dutch cookbook from the middle of the sixteenth century. It is a translation from a recipe by the Italian humanist Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi) in De honeste voluptate (published in 1474, edition Milham, see bibliography). The Dutch cookbook bears the title Eenen nyeuwen…
Belgium
Quince pie
Straight to the recipe A very special pie from the sixteenth century There is a growing interest for vegetables and fruit from the past. Compared to, say the seventeenth century, the variety in apples, pears and plumbs has become less and less. Nowadays it is mainly those varieties that are easy to grow, have a high…
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…
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…
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…
Clareit
Straight to the recipe Spiced wine for warm summer evenings and cold winter nights Mulled wine is most often red wine with spices, served warm at Christmas. In the Netherlands we drink Bisschopswijn (‘bishop’s wine’), also a warm, spiced red wine, on Saint Nicholas Eve (5 December), and in Spain you can drink Sangria, cold red wine with…
Pastry dough according to Lancelot de Casteau
This one of the rare recipes for dough in old cookery books. Cooks knew how to prepare dough, so it was not considered necessary to provide recipes. In the cookbook from Lancelot de Casteau, dating from 1604, is a recipe for a kind of puff pastry. It is part of the recipe for ‘tourtes de…
Wafers with whipped cream
Medieval Dutch wafers Straight to the recipe Wafers are delicious and easy to make. Actually they are a kind of ‘pressed pancakes’. According to The Oxford Companion to Food wafers are thin and crisp, waffles are thicker and made with yeast. The recipe on this page is for thin wafers. The miniature is from the Velislav Picture Bible, which was created…
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…