CUISINES BY REGION
ferent room. Literally the word “banquet” means a little bench or
table, and it was on a little table that the delicacies of this cold buffet
were displayed. They consisted of such things as pastries, pies, wafers,
comfits, dried fruits, nuts, rice porridge, cold meat, fish in aspic, baked
apples and quinces, and raw salads. It would appear that in the late
Middle Ages this cold third course developed into a separate meal
eaten later in the evening, and that in time the term “banquet” came
to describe an entire festive meal.194 In the Low Countries as in Ger-
many, raw salads were practically unknown through most of the Mid-
dle Ages, and even when this Italian custom of eating raw vegetables
moved north of the Alps, the recommendation was to eat the salad
first, and the hot dishes afterward to counteract the salad’s cooling ef-
fect.
Beer and wine top the list of beverages drunk in the Low Countries.
Despite the fact that cattle breeding made cow’s milk readily available,
it seems to have been consumed by children only, not by grown-ups.
Beer, the national drink of the Dutch, was brewed locally or imported
from such Hanseatic towns as Hamburg and Wismar. Wine was drunk
in great quantity by the Hospitallers of Saint John in the sixteenth
century. Among the imported wines sold in the Low Countries were
red wine from Poitou in France, known as Putou, the sweet Mediter-
ranean wines that were also imported to England called bastaert and
Romenye, and some white wines from the Rhine and Moselle regions
in Germany.195
A look at the contents of the first printed cookbook from the
Netherlands, entitled Een notabel boecxhen van cokeryen (A Notable
Book of Cookery), shows just how international Dutch cuisine was at
the end of the medieval period.196 The book was printed in Brussels in
1510 or shortly thereafter by Thomas Vander Noot, who was also the
author and compiler of the recipes.197 Giving a brief description of the
contents, but sparing himself a lengthy introduction or a chapter on
banquets or the like, which was customary in other printed European
cookbooks, Vander Noot begins immediately with his first recipe for a
white sauce to be served with meat, such as capon or veal. The subse-
quent 174 recipes are not arranged in any strict order, and cover such
standard medieval dishes as sauces, jellies, pies, tarts, blanc manger,
potages, broths, and spiced wines. The collection includes no fewer
than 23 pasteien, or pasties, and surprisingly also 6 ravioli recipes.
Looking through the cookbook one is immediately reminded of the
French and Anglo-Norman cookbooks, and their selection of dishes.
And, in fact, a comparison of Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen with
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