Decorative and delicate in taste This is a very special way to serve hardboiled eggs. You prepare them in advance, all you need to do is peel them before serving them. The result is beautiful marbled eggs with the subtle taste of spices. Do not be put off by the long boiling time, the eggs…
ORIGIN
Spanish marinated quail eggs
This is a tapa, to accompany a glass of sherry or wine. It is a very tasty dish, which can be made a day in advance if necessary. Quail’s eggs are perfect fingerfood, they can be eaten in one bite. This Spanish dish wouldn’t be the same when made with chicken eggs. The dressing in…
‘Split nuns’
Stuffed eggs from early sixteenth century The oldest extant Dutch cookbook in print dates from 1514. It is titled Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen (A noble cookery book). The recipe on this page is taken from this book wich has 175 recipes in all. Stuffed eggs have allways been a popular dish. This particular recipe is called ghecloven nonnen,…
Stuffed meatballs in lettuce
Straight to the recipe And about the history of a typically Dutch snack, the ‘frikandel’ The original recipe on this page is called Om Frickedillen in Krop-salaet te maken (to make frickedillen in lettuce). According to Dutch dictionaries, a ‘ frikadel’ is obsolete for meatball, and ‘frikandel’ is vernacular and incorrect. The Frickedillen from the recipe below are indeed meatballs, prepared…
Pyke in Galentyne
Straight to the recipe A medieval feast for nose, eyes and palate Sauces are an important part of the medieval kitchen. Not just because they taste good, but it was the best way to prepare the main ingredient of a dish in such a way that it was as healthy as possible according to the…
Garden Salad
Straight to the recipe The kitchen garden en vogue In the Middle Ages vegetables were impopular. They were unhealthy according to the dietetics of those days, and were held in low esteem. The poor ate greens out of economical need, but the rich and powerful preferably gorged themselve on meat and fowl (and fish if it was…
Chicken with spring vegetables
Straight to the recipe A recipe from the First Stadtholderless Period On 30 April 2013 Dutch Queen Beatrix abdicated from the throne and Willem-Alexander was inaugurated as King of the Netherlands. For the first time in 123 years the Netherlands have a king instead of a queen. As a counterweight to the excessive monarchist manifestations,…
Medieval apple fritters
Straight to the recipe In the Netherlands apple fritters are traditional food on New Year’s Eve. I have chosen an English recipe from the fifteenth century to see how it would have tasted in the past. It could just as well have been any other medieval cookery book, as apple fritters were popular food in the Middle Ages. Fritters on…
Tasty hedgehogs
Straigh to the recipe A medieval subtlety There really are recipes for preparing hedgehog, but fear not: the recipe on this page is without hedgehog meat, it only looks like a hedgehog. The dish is a medieval one, for a savoury ‘hedgehog’ with pork. The extra recipe is from the eighteenth century, a sweet version with marzipan….
A hedgehog of marzipan
Straight to the recipe An recipe from Hannah Glasse Disquised food is always fun. That’s why there are several recipes for fake hedgehogs. You can find more information about the hedgehog as subtlety at the medieval recipe for a meatloaf-hedgehog. The recipe on this page from the eighteenth century is not savoury, but a sweet version…
Whole smoked chicken
The recipe on this page is taken from a cookbook that I have had in my possession for years, but never used to cook out of. It seemed too much trouble. The book: Smoke and Spice: Cooking with Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue. written by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison. Over 400 pages of…
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…
Elegant mushroom pies
Straight to the recipe A fourteenth-century dish from France When I give a talk on medieval cuisine I always serve a sampling of medieval dishes and spiced wine. The recipe on this page never fails to be a success. The pasties were originally served during the first course of a medieval banquet, but in a…
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…
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…