Straight to the recipe A bright summer-sauce from the sixteenth century Blackbirds, thrushes, finches – who doesn’t enjoy hearing these beautifully singing birds? Except of course if you happen to grow currants in your garden. Then suddenly these birds turn into voracious monsters that plunder the bushes before you’ve had the chance to harvest a…
chicken
Capon with caper-sauce
Straight to the recipe Prepared ‘à 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…
Jacobin Sops
Straight to the recipe Take 200 capons … This is a recipe from the delightful cookbook Du fait de cuysine by Maître Chiquart. He was a cook in the service of Amadeus VIII (1383-1451, also known as the last Antipope Felix V from 1439 to 1449), count and first duke of Savoy. Amadeus was a regular guest at the…
Chicken breast with blackberry sauce
A fifteenth-century recipe from Italy Straight to the recipe The colour of food is important to the way in which we experience it. Food wich is green, golden, white or red is thought of as tasty food. Food wich looks blue is less attractive. Ingredients wich are blue-coloured by nature are very few. All that…
Medieval stuffed chicken
Straight to the recipe Pullis iuvenis in tempore estivali This summer I was experimenting with roasting whole chickens on the barbecue, so of course I searched for a medieval recipe too. That was easy, in medieval cuisine roast fowl is standard fare for nobles, and I chose a recipe from the Tractatus de modo preparandi et…
Chicken stock
To the list with recipes for stock and soup Basic recipe – 3½ liter (3 UK quarts, 3.7 US quarts) Commercial chicken stock is often a rather pale liquid. The taste is salty and artificial. Just try making this chicken stock and taste how a simple chicken broth should REALLY taste. To begin with: chicken…
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…
Indonesian chicken stock
Indonesian cuisine does not have soups as a first course, although sometimes they appear on the menu through Chinese and Western influences. One of the dishes in which Indonesian broth is used is soto. That is a ‘full-bodied’ main-course soup, with the meat used for the stock, vegetables, and for example cooked eggs, peanuts, rice or…
Barley soup for a ball
Straight to the recipe Double take The Netherlands celebrated the bicentennial of their existence as a kingdom in 2013. But at the time that was actually 198 years ago, not 200. From 1813 to 1815 the Netherlands were the Souverijne Vorstendom der Verëenigde Nederlanden (the sovereign principality of the united Netherlands). We didn’t have a king, but a prince….
Coulibiac with chicken, a recipe from Carême
Straight to the recipe Russian pastry from the classic French cuisine Coulibiac or coulbac is a traditional Russian pie that has been assimilated in to the classic French cuisine as early as the nineteenth century. The Russian name koulibiac has its origins in German: Kohlgeback (pastry with cabbage). Some versions of coulibiac do contain cabbage. The version with…
Vol-au-vent with ragoût
An old-fashioned first course This used to be a traditional first course in many Dutch Christmas meals. The most common version: ready-bought vol-au-vents, heated in the oven, a can of ragout, heated on the stove. The ingredients of canned ragout: water (what it contains most of is mentioned first), and less than 20% meat. Not just…
Queen’s Soup
Cream of Chicken Soup the Dutch way Three years ago I published the historical version of this soup on Coquinaria, from a seventeenth-century French cookbook. For that soup you needed partridges and cockscombs (not mushrooms, but the real thing), so I do not expect many people to have prepared that soup. That may be completely…
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…
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…
Chinese stock
Soup is important in the Chinese kitchen. No good soup without a good stock. Chinese soup is better not made with a western stock cube, try preparing a Chinese broth instead. Chinese stock is lighter than Western stock. A comparatively small quantity of vegetables is used, just some spring onions and ginger. By the way: it…