For the third course of the menu with adapted recipes in the edition of Het excellente kookboek (The Excellent Cookbook) we decided to put some anchovies on the table as well. There is a still life by the German painter Sebastian Stoskopff (1597-1657) with a dish filled with anchovies as centre piece. It looks like…
17th century
Melon pie from the eighteenth century
Straight to the recipe Deze meloentaart is heerlijk bij koffie of thee, maar in de achttiende eeuw werd hij tegelijk met de tweede gang met vlees- en groentegerechten geserveerd. Het recept komt uit het Hollands of Neederlands kookboek (HNK) uit 1724. Ondanks de patriottische titel heeft dit kookboek vooral uit Franse bronnen geput, met name…
Plum Pie and Pieter Cornelisz Hooft
Straight to the recipe A delicious Dutch pie from the seventeenth century Straight to the recipe Summer is plum season. In Dutch the expression tot in de pruimentijd (litterally ‘see you in the plum season’) has a special meaning: ‘Until we meet again, whenever that may be’. This expression is commonly ascribed to Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft (1581-1647), but there are…
A brief history of pasta – Part 2
To part 1 of the history of pasta When I published two macaroni recipes from World War I, I also added a page on the recent history of the production of macaronipasta. This page can be considered as the ‘prequel’ of that history section: pasta and macaroni from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century….
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…
Jacobin sops for Good Friday
In the introduction to the recipe for Pomegranate Salad I mentioned the only day that the (catholic) French alle ate vegetarian. That is really something special, because ordering a vegetarian dish in an average French restaurant usually results in raised eyebrows and a rather plain meatless dish. The recipe on this page and the recipe…
Spinach Pie
This the third recipe for Good Friday. The other recipes are Pomegranate Salad and Jacobin Sops. If one grows spinach in the kitchen garden, or is from an older generation, one might remember the sharp-edged seeds of some varieties of spinach. Spinach had to be washed very thoroughly to remove all those unpleasant seeds. Nowadays…
Divine wine
An exquisite drink from the seventeenth century Straight to the recipe During the seventeenth century a meal was often concluded by drinking spiced wine to stimulate the digestion. Hippocras was such a drink, which was already known during the Middle Ages. But there were other kinds of spiced wine as well. Vin des dieux (‘wine of the gods’) is such a spiced wine,…
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…
Vegetarian stock for Lent
Recipes from the seventeenth century During Lent, between carnival and Easter, the catholic church (and after the Reformation several protestant churches as well) restricted the faithful to a meatless diet. During the Middle Ages all diary products were also banned during Lent, later the use of butter was permitted. Almonds were used instead of meat…
Lemonade
Een French recipe from the seventeenth century Straight to the recipe A very simple recipe, because I am in the middle of moving house (summer 2007), and have been very busy. Where does the word lemonade come from? Lemonade comes from ‘lemon’ or the French ‘limon’. Another French word for lemon is citron, which is…
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…
La Varenne’s meat stock
This is the first ‘historical’ recipe for stock on my site. This meat stock is taken from Le cuisinier françois by François Pierre la Varenne, from 1651. It is the opening recipe in the book, a real basic recipe. The stock is made with a lot of meat, and all kinds of it: beef, mutton, fowl. From…
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:…
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…