While writing the history of Dutch cuisine, author Jacques Meerman made a special discovery. The traditional Dutch endive stew is less than a hundred years old. So what is typically Dutch in our kitchen?
Jacques Meerman comes from a family of gourmets:both his father and grandfather were pastry chefs. He himself wrote for years about food, in particular about the Spanish cuisine from his Spanish hometown. He became fascinated by Dutch cuisine especially abroad.
The Dutch pot is sometimes called monotonous. Meerman disagrees. “Dutch cuisine is very special and varied. Take endive stew. You will not find this pinnacle of subtlety anywhere in the world. Because not all endive fits in the pan at once for an entire family, a little is always added. So we don't eat raw endive at all, but endive in different stages of cooking. No star chef would dare to do this.”
Oldest endive stew recipe found?
During his research, Meerman noticed that he could not find a centuries-old recipe for stews. “Stamppot turns out to be much younger than we think,” he says. “There were recipes with the ingredients for stew, but we have only been mashing it since the end of the nineteenth century. Maria Haezenbroek first describes it in 1880 in her book The contemporary cooking. She mashes stew, but she only makes a salad from the endive.”
Meerman got no further than a 1940s endive stew recipe and, in search of older versions, he placed an appeal online. The result is a recipe from 1929. Historian Roel Mulder found this oldest recipe for endive stew in the local newspaper of Scherpenzeel. If you know an even older recipe, please tell us.
Chicken with oysters typically Dutch
But if stew hasn't been our national dish for centuries, what has it been? Meerman:“There is no ancient national dish. The famous French chef Vincent La Chapelle, employed by Stadholder Willem IV, wrote a cookbook in 1735. In it he calls chicken with cooked oysters a typical Dutch dish. It was intended for the elite, not the common man. Nobody was interested in what poor people ate and they couldn't write it down themselves, so we know very little about that. Chicken with oyster recipes are not very common in other cookbooks, so the question is to what extent that was typically Dutch. In any case, it no longer sounds Dutch to us.”
There is an example of a historical dish that has been given a national touch, Meerman emphasizes. “In the nineteenth century, stew is mentioned as a dish 'whose breast swells with pride'. This is a reference to the Siege of Leiden in 1574, in which the Spaniards are said to have left a cauldron of stew during their hasty flight from the Dutch beggars. But we don't know at all what was in that cauldron, that was only invented in the nineteenth century."
Historical events explain kitchen
For research into the history of Dutch cuisine, Meerman delved into the special collections of the University of Amsterdam, among other things. This is where the gastronomic libraries of the late culinary journalist Johannes van Dam and culinary historian Joop Witteveen are located. These men have collected everything there is to collect in the culinary field, according to Meerman. The author then wants to systematically link the history of the kitchen to historical events. “To understand the changes in our kitchen, you need historical coherence,” says Meerman.
As an example, he cites the connection between the international potato crisis in the mid-nineteenth century and the introduction of the new constitution in 1848. Without the violent riots by the hungry Dutch, the frightened King William II would never have signed a constitution that would hold his own power firmly. restricted, Meerman thinks.
Looking at history, a few events stand out that have caused important changes in Dutch cuisine. Meerman:“Nothing of the Roman cuisine has been left behind in the Netherlands. Only with the centralized empire of Charlemagne in the eighth century did vegetables and herbs return to the Netherlands that were also used in Roman cuisine, such as celery.”
Influence of Arabic cuisine enormous
In the Middle Ages, Europe became acquainted with new Arabic ingredients and cooking techniques, such as breading and then deep-frying. “A Spanish-Arabic cookbook from the eleventh century already contains a recipe for 'Wiener schnitzel' made from lamb”, Meerman says. “The influence of the Arabic cuisine was very important for our cuisine. Arabs ruled large parts of Spain for centuries from the eighth century until they were finally defeated in 1492. Their trade networks ran through North Africa to the Middle East and Asia. Many new products came from there that changed European cuisine, such as spinach and citrus fruits. This spread from Spain to the rest of Europe. I explain it by the terminology:the Arabic F was pronounced as a P in Spain. Spinach we would now have pronounced with an F if it had not reached Northern Europe via Spain.”
Another notable event that caused a change in the kitchen was the founding of domestic schools for girls in the nineteenth century. "Sometimes people make fun of it, but the influence of domestic science schools on Dutch cuisine is very large. The ladies were not limited by traditions and invented all kinds of new dishes, which then spread to households throughout the Netherlands.
For example, they made stews on a large scale in the first half of the twentieth century. They also varied it by mixing stew with healthy pods and oatmeal. However, the raw endive recipe hasn't changed since the first version in 1929. That's still how I make it today."
The most recent events that have changed our cuisine are the emergence of supermarkets and large-scale manufacturing with all its processed products and the enormous expansion of the number of restaurants of all shapes and sizes. Cooking isn't just about preparing more healthy food and keeping your man happy; the great enjoyment has made its appearance. Meerman:“This is a psychological turnaround and causes one of the most important changes in the culinary history of our kitchen.”