This is a very rich ice cream, with sugar, fat and cholesterol. So, why would you want to make it? Because it is simply delicious! The secret for enjoying this ice cream is self-control. Do not make it all the time (just occasionallly), and eat small portions. Governments and manufacturers are wrong in thinking the…
ORIGIN
Stamppot – Traditional Dutch Winterfare
Warming, loving, substantial food While I am writing this (2 December 2010) it’s freezing cold outside, the canal in front of my house is frozen, and everything is covered with a layer of snow. Apparently I live near a salt depot, for in the last half hour I have counted five gritting lorries loaded with…
Medieval goose
Straight to the recipe An English recipe from the fourteenth century Turkey seems to be the bird par excellence for a Christmas dinner. Personally I do not like turkey. The meat is rather tasteless and much too dry. Presumably it is exactly that neutral taste and low-fat meat which make turkey such a popular…
Traditional Dutch potato salad
Russian Salad the Dutch way I suppose Russian Salad is a popular dish all over the world, but I wonder whether it is as connected with festive holidays as in the Netherlands, where it is called Hussar’s Salad (‘Huzarensalade’). It is a traditional dish on New Year’s Eve, presented as a clock with the hands…
To make a trifle
Straight to the recipe Mrs Beeton’s calorie bomb Our Christmas dinner from 2011 was themed Austen and Dickens. The recipe on this page was the dessert: trifle. An enjoyable dish to prepare, but a veritable mountain of sugar and liquor at the close of the meal. The dish can be prepared almost completely in advance;…
Custard with ratafia
Straight to the recipe A delicious dessert from the eighteenth century Vla ( ), a kind of custard, is very popular in the Netherlands as dessert, but it is seldom home-made. Industrial custard is made with sugar and carbohydrates, but no eggs. How different it was during the eighteenth century! Look at the recipe below and…
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…
Rhubarb, the reverse tomato
Two recipes for early summer Straight to the recipe Rhubarb is a culinary eccentric, the counterpart of the tomato. Much like the tomato is a fruit that we treat as a vegetable, the rhubarb is actually a vegetable that we treat as a fruit. However, this has only been the case since the last two…
Arabian pasties
Straight to the recipe Just like the Arabian meatballs, these pasties were presented at the opening of the exhibition of Sidrac in 2006. The pasties are stuffed with eggplant from the Anonymous Andalusian Cookery book, and spinach from the Kitāb al-Ţabīkh-al-Baghdadī. Both cookbooks date from the thisrteenth century. More on the Andalusian cookbook can be read at the…
A medieval evergreen
Very, very healthy! In Asterix in Britain, the heroes Asterix and Obelix’ first meal on British soil is eaten in a pub called ‘The Jolly Boar’. Obelix is deeply disappointed, his favourite boar has not been roasted, but boiled. To make matters even worse, it is served in a green mint sauce. Boring. Had Obelix lived fourteen centuries later,…
Moutayes
Straight to the recipe Moutayes are sweet fritters from the Mauritian cuisine. This recipe is published with the recipe for Vindaye, Mauritian fish curry. See that page for information on the history of Mauritian cuisine. In case you didn’t know: the isle Mauritius is situated in the Indian Ocean, East of Madagascar. Grandmother’s kitchen As with the vindaye, the…
Mock eggs for Lent
Just for fun Straight to the recipe This an extra recipe with the Medieval coloured easter Eggs. During Lent, between carnival and Easter, no eggs were eaten. But sometimes eggs did appear on the table, as a joke. These were mock eggs, made with pike roe (also eggs, but from fish, so these were permitted) or…
Vegetarian cutlets from World War I
Straight to the recipe Recently a book was published containing the biography of the Dutch chef Iwan Kriens (1871- ca 1957) who had a very succesful career in England. To honour the occasion, this page contains a recipe from The Victory Cookery Book, which he wrote with Mrs C.S. (Dorothy) Peel in 1918. Kriens already had…
Polish cold soup from a Russian cookbook
Very refreshing! This is a delicious dish when it is hot. It is a soup, a chlodnik or ‘cold thingy’ according to the cookbook A gift to young housewives (Пода́рок молоды́м хозя́йкам, first published in 1861) from Jelena Molochovjets. According to her, this soup is Polish in origin. The Polish wikipedia defines Chłodnik as any cold soup; the Spanish gazpacho is also a…
Hot-smoked cod with mustard-cilantro sauce
A Chinese recipe Elsewhere on Coquinaria is the recipe for hot-smoked salmon. Here is another recipe for hot-smoked fish, but this time from China. The fifference with ‘Western’ smoking is the smoke-medium: not woodchips or sawdust, but tea leaves with rice, sugar and spices. The fish is not cured but marinated and steamed before smoking. When…