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 and buckling. In the…
Netherlands
Cucumber Salad
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…
Vol-au-vent with fish
A pescetarian alternative for ragoût with meat Recently I have published the recipe for vol-au-vent with ragoût of chicken meat. That once was a classic Dutch first course for Christmas dinner. Here is an alternative for people who do not eat meat, but do eat fish. This ragoût can also be used as stuffing for…
Anchovy sauce
This recipe is from a manuscript that is kept in the Royal Library in The hague. It dates from around 1780. A transcription is in progress. The original recipe *wel vervarschd (well rinsed) – desalted by putting in water which has been changed regularly Modern adaptation of the recipe Butter sauce with anchovies can accompany…
Surprise Eggs
Straight to the recipe A Dutch recipe from the eighteenth century This decorative dish consists of whole, emptied eggs shells that are stuffed with raw eggs with crayfish and mushrooms and heated until the stuffing has congealed. When the eggs have been peeled and placed on a dish, they will be a very attractive side…
Tulip bulb soup
Straight to the recipe A recipe from the Hunger Winter ’44/’45 For a long time I hesitated whether to publish this recipe. For some Dutch people this dish raises memories to a traumatic period in thier lives. The tulip bulb soup was served during the Amsterdam Symposium to Food in January 2015, which had the theme ‘Food,…
Red mustard the Roman way
Straight to the recipe This is not the first recipe for mustard on Coquinaria. The first mustard-recipe, from the fourteenth-century cookbook Le Ménagier de Paris, was published fifteen years ago. Mustard in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times is comparable to tomato ketchup or soy sauce in some restaurants: there is a bottle on…
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:…
Quince jelly
In the Dutch language quinces are called quince apple or or quince pear. According to the sixteenth-century recipe for quince pie, quince apples must cooked and quince pears baked. I am not sure why, the form of a quince makes no difference in the preparation. The recipe on this page is for quince jelly from…
Traditional Dutch Banketletter
“Keep it simple: start with an I” The banketletter is one of the few traditional Dutch Christmas bakes, as most Dutch December bakes are actually done for the national children’s feast Sinterklaas on December 5th. Most people just buy it in the stores, and I must admit that it takes some work to make a…
Traditional Dutch herring salad
The Dutch are famous for eating ‘Dutch new’ or ‘matjes’ herring, which is essentially still raw. Tourists stare with fascinated abhorrence at those strange people who let the fish slide down their throats with extatic expressions on their face. But why would this be any less delicious than eating Japanese sashimi? And the herring is…
Dutch bitterballen from leftover oxtail meat
With oxtail meat and stock and dried ceps For the family Christmas dinner in 2014 I had prepared an old-fashioned clear oxtail consommé as first course. I ended up with leftover stock and a lot of leftover meat from the oxtail. I froze part of the meat with 3 cups of the stock, and when two months later…
Dutch Bishop Wine
Although actually it’s English! The Dutch consider Bishop wine as a typically Dutch mulled wine for Sint Nicholas Eve. But it appears that its origins are not Dutch at all. According to the large Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (Lexicon of the Dutch Language, published in installments from 1864 to 1998), bisschopswijn has English roots. The name indicates the…
Recipes for Dutch Santa Claus
In the Netherlands the birthday of Saint Nicholas – or Sinterklaas in Dutch – is celebrated on the eve of 5 December. It is mainly a feast for children, but when the children stop ‘believing’ the feast becomes even more fun. In my family we celebrate the Dutch equivalent of Secret Santa, which does not…
Eggs with gooseberries
Straight to the recipe An odd but tasty dish Recently I published an article in the periodical De Boekenwereld (The Book World) on Roman Catholic recipes in the eighteenth-century cookery book De Volmaakte Hollandsche Keuken-Meid (The perfect Dutch Kitchen Maid). The indirect cause of that article was a recipe I published on Coquinaria a year ago, a Dish for Lent with prunes…