Dutch cuisine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.

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Dutch cuisine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dutch cuisine is shaped by the agricultural produce and history of the

Life in the Netherlands
Netherlands. It is characterized by its somewhat limited diversity in dishes, the
high consumption of vegetables when compared to the consumption of meat,
Cuisine
and the wholesomeness of the dishes.
Culture
Customs
Demographics
Contents Economy
Education
1 History Holidays
2 Agricultural products Languages
3 Indonesian influence Law
4 Bread and cheese Law enforcement
5 Coffee and tea Media
6 Dinner Music
7 Alcoholic drinks Politics
8 Special occasions Religion
9 Fast food Sport
10 Footnotes Taxation
11 External links Transport
Specific policies:
Abortion
History Drug policy
Euthanasia
Pillarisation
The modest and plain outlook of what is nowadays considered as traditional Prostitution
Same-sex marriage
Dutch cuisine appears to be the result of a fairly recent development. From the
17th century onward, the dishes of the wealthy consisted of a rich variety of
fruits, cheeses, meat, wine and nuts. The national cuisine became greatly impoverished when, at the turn of the
20th century, ever greater numbers of girls were sent to a new school type, the Huishoudschool, where young
women were trained to become domestic servants, and where lessons in cooking cheap and simple meals were a
major part of the curriculum. [1][2]

Agricultural products
Dutch agriculture roughly consists of five sectors: fishery, animal husbandry, tillage-based, fruit-based, and
greenhouse-based agriculture. The last has had little or no influence on traditional Dutch eating habits.

Tillage-based crops include: potatoes, beetroot, green beans, carrots, celeriac, onions, cabbage, Brussels
sprouts, cauliflower, endive, spinach, Belgian endive, and lettuce. Recently some initiatives have been
started to encourage interest in such "forgotten" vegetables as common purslane, medlars, parsnips, and
black salsify.

Greenhouses are used to produce tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and sweet peppers.

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Fruits include apples, pears, cherries, and plums.

The Dutch keep cows both for milk and for their meat, chickens for their eggs and for meat, and pigs for
their meat.

The fishery sector lands cod, herring, plaice, sole, mackerel, eels, tuna, salmon, trout, oysters, mussels,
shrimp, and sardines.

Indonesian influence
Because of the Dutch colonial past, there has been a considerable Asian influence on Dutch cuisine. From the
16th century onwards all sorts of spices mainly from the Dutch Indies were introduced into Dutch cuisine.
Hence many traditional Dutch dishes are (heavily) flavoured with Southeast Asian herbs and spices. Later
Indonesian dishes such as nasi goreng, rice with chicken or pork, became part of Dutch cuisine. Because of this,
local Chinese takeaway restaurants in the Netherlands also have considerable Indonesian influences, leading
many restaurants to style themselves "Chinese-Indonesian".

Bread and cheese

The Dutch are famous for their dairy products and especially for their (cow's milk) cheeses. The vast majority of
Dutch cheeses are semi-hard or hard cheeses. Famous Dutch cheeses include Gouda, Edamm, Leyden. A
typically Dutch way of making cheese is to blend in herbs or spices during the first stages of the production
process. Famous examples of this are cheeses with cloves (usually the Frisian nagelkaas), cumin and caraway
(most famously Leyden cheese), or nettles.

Dutch bread tends to be very airy, as it is made from yeast dough. From the 1970s onward Dutch bread became
predominantly whole grain, with additional seeds such as sunflower or pumpkin seeds often mixed with the
dough for taste. Rye bread is one of the few dense breads of the Netherlands. White bread used to be the luxury
bread, often made with milk as well as water. A Frisian luxury version of white bread is sugarbread, white bread
with large lumps of sugar mixed with the dough.

As well as cheese, the Dutch also use meat products and sweet spreads on their bread: typically sprinkles
(hagelslag), treacle (stroop), and peanut butter (pindakaas). Regionally popular hearty meats include blood
sausage (bloedworst), dried sausage, and uierboord, made from cows' udders.

Coffee and tea

The Dutch drink coffee and tea throughout the day, often served with a single biscuit. Dutch thrift led to the
famous standard rule of only one cookie with each cup of coffee; it has been suggested that the reasons for this
can be found in the commercial mentality and Protestant upbringing. A popular Dutch story (that has never been
confirmed) says that in the late 1940s the wife of the then Prime minister, Willem Drees, served this (coffee and
one biscuit) to a visiting American diplomat, who thereupon became convinced that the money from the
Marshall Plan was being well-spent.

Café au lait is also frequently drunk. It is called koffie verkeerd (literally "wrong-way-round-coffee") and
consists of half-and-half black coffee and hot milk. Other hot drinks include kwast (hot water with lemon juice),
anijsmelk (hot milk with aniseed) and the very popular hot chocolate or chocolate milk .

Dutch people invite friends over for "koffietijd" (coffee time), which consists of coffee and cake or a biscuit,

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and is served between 10 and 11 a.m. (before lunch).

Dinner
Dinner, traditionally served early by international standards, starts at about 5 o'clock in the evening. The
classical Dutch dinner consists of one simple course: traditionally potatoes, with vegetables and meat and gravy,
or a stew wherein potatoes and vegetables have been mixed. If there is a starter, it is usually soup. Today the
meal is often heavily influenced by foreign cuisine. Amalgams of foreign dishes such as Italian pastas,
Indonesian meat and rice dishes, Mexican enchiladas, Swiss cheese fondue are commonly encountered on the
Dutch dinner table and on the menus of local restaurants. The final course is a sweet dessert: traditionally
yoghurt with some sugar or vla (cooked milk with custard).

Some classical typical Dutch dishes include stamppot (Dutch stew) and pea soup. Famous stamppotten include:

Hutspot, made from potatoes, onions and carrots served with slow-cooked meat or bacon. This is a legacy
of the Spanish invaders, who, according to legend, left a pot of this stew behind in their abandoned
trenches when the town of Leiden, which they had been besieging, was liberated in 1574 – so that hutspot
was one of the first foods its starving inhabitants found. Before potatoes were used in Europe hutspot was
made from parsnips, carrots, and onions.
Boerenkoolstamppot, kale mixed with potatoes, served with gravy, mustard, and rookworst (smoked
sausage).
Stamppot rauwe andijvie, raw endive mashed through hot potatoes, served with diced fried speck.
Hete bliksem, boiled potatoes and green apples, served with "stroop" (syrup) or tossed with diced speck
Zuurkoolstamppot, sauerkraut mashed with potatoes. Served with fried bacon or a sausage. Sometimes
curry powder, raisins or slices of pineapple are used to give a stamppot an exotic touch.

Stews are often served with mixed pickle, including zure zult or stewed pears (stoofperen).

Meat products include gehaktballen meatballs, blinde vink, minced meat wrapped in bacon, balkenbrij, a type of
liverwurst and meatloaf. The gravy in which the meat is produced is also eaten. A variant of this, eaten around
the IJsselmeer, is butter en eek, where vinegar is added to the gravy.

If a dish consists of beans/potatoes, meat and vegetables, these vegetables are sometimes served as a stew, like
"rode kool met appeltjes" (red cabbage with apples), or "rode bieten" (red beets). Regular spices used in stews of
this kind may be bayleaves, juniper berries, cloves, and vinegar.

Dinner can also consist of pancakes. The Dutch make them in several forms, including poffertjes (miniature
pancakes) and spekdik (a Northern variant with bacon). Wentelteefjes )French toast are similar. Broeder, a type
of cake, is also eaten for dinner, mainly in West Friesland.

Desserts often include vla, pudding, or yoghurt. Regional variants include broodpap, made from old bread,
griesmeelpudding, grutjespap, Haagse bluf, Hangop, Jan in de zak, Karnemelksepap, Rijstebrij (rice pudding),
Krentjebrij, and Watergruwel.

Alcoholic drinks
Traditionally wine has received a modest role in Dutch cuisine, but there are many brands of beer (mainly lager)
and strong alcoholic liquor. The most famous Dutch beer producers are Heineken in the west and Grolsch in the
east. Also a variety of bitters where Beerenburg is the most famous. Strong liquors include Jenever (gin) and
Brandewijn (brandy), but also kandeel (made from white wine), Kraamanijs (a liquor made from aniseed),

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Oranjebitter (a type of orange brandy, which is served on festivities surrounding the royal family), advocaat,
Boerenjongens, raisins in brandewijn, Boerenmeisjes, apricots in brandewijn.

Special occasions
On special occasions, pastries are eaten.

When a baby is born in a family, the young parents traditionally serve

their guests beschuit met muisjes (Dutch rusk covered with sugared
aniseed).

The Dutch festival of Sinterklaas (dedicated to Saint Nicolas) is held

on the 5 December. Special pastries are made and are distributed by
his aide Zwarte Piet; they include pepernoten (gingernut-like biscuits
but made with cinnamon, pepper, cloves and nutmeg mix of spices),
letters made from chocolate, marzipan, borstplaat (discs of fondant);
Whipped cream cake, a very popular
and several types of spiced cookies: taai-taai, speculaas and Dutch cake
kruidnoten, banketstaaf, made from almond meal

On New Year's Eve, Dutch houses smell of the piping hot oil used
to prepare oliebollen, appelflappen and appelbeignets (battered
apple rings) in deep-fat fryers. These yeast dough balls, filled with
glacé fruits, pieces of apple and raisins and sultanas, are served with
powdered sugar and are a special treat for New Year's Eve. The
Dutch also took their oliebollen to America, where they are now
known in a slightly different form as doughnuts.

On birthdays all kinds of cakes and cookies are eaten, including

appeltaart {apple pie), Bossche bol, dikke koek, cream cake, Fryske
dumkes, gevulde koek (cookies filled with almond meal), Groninger Oliebollen, a Dutch pastry eaten on New
koek, Janhagel, Ketelkoek, Kindermanstik, Knieperties, Krakeling, Year's Eve.
Krentenwegge, Kruidkoek, Limburgse vlaai, Nonnevotten,
Ouwewijvenkoek, peperkoek (gingerbread), Rijstekoek, Spekkoek
(from Indonesia), Sprits, Tompouce, Trommelkoek, Bitterkoekjes, Kletskop and Stroopwafel.

A famous Dutch sweet is drop (liquorice). Dutch drop is sold in a large variety of shapes and forms. Drop can
be either sweet or salty (or very salty). It is sometimes flavoured with coconut fondant (Engelse drop or English
drop), honey (honingdrop), mint (muntdrop), salmiak (salmiakdrop), or laurel (laurierdrop). Typical shapes are
lozenges, ovals, oblongs and coins. Honeycombs for honeydrop are also familiar. Some manufacturers have
introduced speciality ranges where the drop is made in thematic shapes, such as cars (autodrop), farm animals
and farm machine rys (boerderijdrop), etc.

Fast food
The Dutch have their own types of fast food. A Dutch fast-food meal often consists of a portion of french fries
(called friet or patat) with a sauce and a meat product. The most common sauce to accompany French fries is
mayonnaise, while others can be ketchup or spiced ketchup, peanut sauce or piccalilli. Sometimes the fries are
served with combinations of sauces, most famously speciaal (special): mayonnaise, with (spiced) ketchup and
chopped onions; and oorlog (literally "war"): mayonnaise and peanut sauce (sometimes also with ketchup and

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chopped onions). The meat product is usually a deep fried snack; this includes the frikandel (a deep fried
skinless minced meat sausage), and the kroket (deep fried meat ragout covered in breadcrumbs).

A smaller version of the kroket, the bitterbal, is often served with mustard as a snack in bars and at official
receptions. Regional snacks include eierbal (a combination of egg and ragout) in the North and East, and
Brabants worstenbrood, a sausage baked in bread. Other snacks are the Indonesian-inspired bamihap (deep-fried
mee goreng in breadcrumbs) and nasibal (deep-fried nasi goreng in breadcrumbs).

Another kind of fast food is fish. This includes raw herring, which is sold in markets and eaten (often with
chopped onions), by lifting the herring high in the air by its tail, and eating it upwards, or (less messily) on a
bun. Other regular fish snack are kibbeling (deep-fried nugget-sized chunks of cod), smoked eel, and rollmops.

Footnotes
1. ^ http://www.wereldexpat.nl/nl/typischNL/recepten/kookboek_rijksmuseum.htm
2. ^ http://www.antiqbook.nl/gastronomie/nedkook.phtml/

External links
Dutch food and eating habits (http://www.thehollandring.com/food.shtml)
Eating the Dutch way (http://www.cp-pc.ca/english/netherlands/eating.html)

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Categories: Dutch cuisine | Dutch culture

This page was last modified 20:04, 30 December 2007.

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