Straight to the recipe A delicate herald of Spring The text for this recipe is from a cookbook from the nineteenth century, but in fact the recipe is older. In Le cuisinier from Pierre de Lune (1656) there is a ‘potage the santé’ with sorrel, purslane, chervil and herbs, and no doubt there are other comparable recipes. Two…
parsley
Medieval Easter Eggs
Straight to the recipe Playing with colours During Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday before Easter, eggs were banned from the table. But as the days started to grow longer again after the winter solstice, hens began laying their eggs again! So you can bet that on Easter Sunday, when…
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…
Nourishing square omelette
Straight to the recipe Medieval stuffed omelette with marrow Some years ago I prepared a menu in the Culinair-historisch Kookmuseum (‘culinary cookery museum’) in Appelscha in the North of the Netherlands, consisting of medieval recipes with marrow from first course to dessert. The menu was called To the bone (Tot op het bot). The recipe below was one of…
Black salsify with parsley sauce
Straight to the recipe A ‘forgotten’ vegetable There are two vegetables that look like asparagus once they’re peeled: salsify and scorzonera or black salsify. Both are winter vegetables, and both are the root of a plant, while asparagus is actually the stalk with the bud. According to Allan Davidson, salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) is better known…
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,…