Dutch Peasant Cuisine, 1902
From Dutch Life in Town and Country by P. M. Hough, 1902.
From: 1902 C.E. To: 1902 C.E.
Location: The Netherlands
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Dutch Life in Town and Country by P. M. Hough, 1902.
If the dress of the boers is solid, quaint, and national, the daily food of the class is in keeping with their conservative temper and traditional gastronomic ability. It is of the plainest character, but often consists of the strangest mixtures.
When the pig is killed, and the different parts for hams, sides of bacon, etc., have been stored, and the sausages made—especially after they have boiled the black-puddings, or bloedworst, which is made of the blood of the pigs—a thick, fatty substance remains in the pot. This they thicken with buckwheat meal till it forms a porridge, and then they eat it with treacle. The name of this dish is balkenbry. A portion of this, together with some of the slacht, i.e., the flesh of the pig, is sent as a present to the clergyman of the village, and it is to be hoped he enjoys it.
Another favourite dish, especially in Overyssel and Gelderland, is kruidmoes. This is a mixture of buttermilk boiled with buckwheat meal, vegetables, celery, and sweet herbs, such as thyme, parsley, and chervil, and, to crown all, a huge piece of smoked bacon, and it is served steaming hot.
The poor there eat a great deal of rice and flour boiled with buttermilk, which, besides being very nutritious, is "matchless for the complexion," like many of the advertised soaps. The very poor have what is called a vetpot. This they keep in the cellar, and in it they put every particle of fat that remains over from their meals. Small scraps of bacon are melted down and added to it, for this fat must last them the whole winter through as an addition to their potatoes. Indeed, the vetpot plays as great a part in a poor man's house as the "stock-pot" does in an English kitchen.
The meals are cooked in a large iron pot, which hangs from a hook over the open hearth. The fuel consists of huge logs of wood and heather sods, which are also used for covering the roof of the plaggewoning.
Black or rye bread takes the place of white, and is generally homemade. In Brabant the women bake what is called boeren mik. This is a delicious long brown loaf, and there are always a few raisins mixed with the dough to keep it from getting stale.
Those who have no ovens of their own put the dough in a large long baking-tin and send it to the baker. One of the children, on his way back from school, fetches it and carries it home under his arm. You may often see farmers' children walking about in their wooden shoes with two or more loaves under their arms. Both wooden shoes and loaves are used in a dispute between comrades, and the loaf-carrier generally gains the day. The crusts are very hard and difficult to cut, but inside the bread is soft and palatable.
In Brabant, the peasants—small of stature, black-haired, brown-eyed, more of the Flemish than the Dutch type—are as a rule Roman Catholics, and on Shrove Tuesday evening, Vastenavond, ("Fast evening," the night before Lent), they bake and eat worstebrood.
On the outside this bread looks like an ordinary white loaf, but on cutting it open you find it to contain a spicy sausage-meat mixture. All the people in this part of the country observe the Carnival, with its accustomed license.
Hough, P. M. Dutch Life in Town and Country. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1902.
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