Straight to the recipe Prepared ‘Ă la braise’ A delicious dish from the nineteenth century that is easy to prepare. How delicious exactly, depends on the poultry (a real capon -mouthwatering but expensive-, a good poularde -very tasty as well-, or the watery pale poor industrial chicken -bleh-) and the stock you use (homemade chicken stock or a…
Germany
Herb soup with potato dumplings
Straight to the recipe A delicate herald of Spring The text for this recipe is from a cookbook from the nineteenth century, but in fact the recipe is older. In Le cuisinier from Pierre de Lune (1656) there is a ‘potage the santĂ©’ with sorrel, purslane, chervil and herbs, and no doubt there are other comparable recipes. Two…
Medieval Easter Eggs
Straight to the recipe Playing with colours During Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday before Easter, eggs were banned from the table. But as the days started to grow longer again after the winter solstice, hens began laying their eggs again! So you can bet that on Easter Sunday, when…
Chestnut Pie
Straight to the recipe Chestnut are a symbol of autumn, whether they are the toxic horse chestnuts that are so much fun for children to play with (it’s safe, as long as you don’t eat them), or delicious sweet chestnuts. This is not the first recipe with chestnuts (Castanea sativa) on Coquinaria, but this is…
Nineteenth-century Anchovy Toast
The recipe on this page was my Christmas card from 2018. Christine Charlotte Riedl The illustration above is from the Lindauer Kochbuch that contains the recipe for anchovy toast. This is a German cookery book that has been in print from the middle of the nineteenth century to 1925. The full title is the Lindauer…
Pasties with sweetbread
Straight to the recipe What Johann Sebastian Bach might have eaten in Leipzig The connection between the pasties and the famous German baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is tenuous; a few years after Susanna Eger had published her cookbook (in 1706), J.S. Bach accepted the situation of cantor in the Lutheran Thomaskirche in Leipzig. He would work there from 1723 until his…
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…
Royal Punch from Poland
Straight to the recipe The recipe on this page is a historical version of the Feuerzangenbowle that can also be found on Coquinaria. Both are for hot, mulled wine that is sweetened by a sugar cone which is drenched in rum and set alight above the punch bowl. I was looking for a historical version of the…
Feuerzangenbowle, playing with fire
In October 2018 I gave a guest-talk for an international group of ex-pats in The Hague on spiced wines through the ages. It was a great evening, especially because these people, from all over the world, quite liked the experience. One of the people present was Thomas, a German. He asked me whether I had…