Dutch cuisine is formed from the cooking traditions and practices of the Netherlands. The country's cuisine is shaped by its location on the fertile Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta at the North Sea, giving rise to fishing, farming, and overseas trade. Due to the availability of water and flat grassland, the Dutch diet contains many dairy products such as butter and cheese. The court of the Burgundian Netherlands enriched the cuisine of the elite in the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th century, a process continued in the 17th and 18th centuries thanks to colonial trade. At this time, the Dutch ruled the spice trade, played a pivotal role in the global spread of coffee, and started the modern era of chocolate by developing the Dutch process of first removing fat from cocoa beans using a hydraulic press, creating cocoa powder, and then alkalizing it to make it less acidic and more palatable.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dutch food and food production was designed to be more efficient, an effort so successful that the country became the world's second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. It gave the Dutch the reputation of being the feeders of the world, but Dutch food, such as stamppot, of having a bland taste. However, influenced by the eating culture of its colonies (particularly Indonesian cuisine), and later by globalization, there is a renewed focus on taste, which is also reflected in the 119 Michelin-starred restaurants in the country.
Dutch cuisine can traditionally be divided in three regions. The northeast of the country is known for its meats and sausages (rookworst, metworst) and heavy rye bread, the west for fish (smoked eel, soused herring, kibbeling, mussels), spirits (jenever) and dairy-based products (stroopwafel, boerenkaas), and the south for stews (hachée), fruit products and pastry (Limburgse vlaai, apple butter, bossche bol). A peculiar characteristic for Dutch breakfast and lunch is the sweet bread toppings such as hagelslag, vlokken, and muisjes, and the Dutch are the highest consumers of liquorice in the world.
History 14th–16th centuries Early cookbooks for the elite picture a homogeneous food culture across Europe. Differences were in the use of what was locally available; milk and butter—from the low-lying grasslands of Holland and Friesland—were used in the Netherlands, in comparison to bacon fat used in German countries and England, and oil in Southern Europe. Dutch butter and cheese continued to be famous products for centuries. The common people ate half-liquid brij or porridge, potage (consisting of root vegetables, peas, herbs, meat and fish) and soppe (vegetable/meat/fish paste, thickened with bread). The characteristically thick Dutch pea soup snert eaten with rye bread was indebted to this medieval tradition. Beer flavoured with gruit was the common drink as water was of poor quality, and was produced until the 14th century at the monasteries. The replacement of gruit for hop, a German innovation, extended shelf life, turning the Low Countries into a major beer exporter. It still is the largest beer exporter of Europe. Brand, established in 1349, is the country's oldest beer brand.
In the 14th century gibbing was invented by Willem Beukelszoon, extending the shelf life of herring, making it possible to sail further and catch more. It created a booming export industry for and a monopoly in soused herring (), and sat the foundation for the later seafaring and colonial Dutch Empire. The Dutch still celebrate Vlaggetjesdag (Flag Day) each spring, when fishermen go out to sea to capture the annual herring catch: Hollandse Nieuwe.
Vegetable Gardens were used by monasteries and later by castles for their own kitchens. Keukenhof (literally kitchen garden, but now a flower park) is such an example. Orchards for pears and apples connected to castles were later used for export and set off a Dutch horticulture tradition that remains to this day. In the castles, which have hunting grounds as well, haute cuisine began to emerge, and in 1510, the first Dutch-language cook book, aimed at the upper class, was printed in Brussels, called Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen (A notable book of cookery). It offers recipes for festivities, such as sauces, game, jellies, fish, meat, pies, eggs, dairy products, candied quinces and ginger, and contains one of the world's oldest known recipes for appeltaerten, apple pie. The recipes come from various sources, such as the French recipe book Le Viandier, reflecting the close ties between Dutch cuisine and the northern French cuisine, as the whole region was part of the Burgundian Netherlands, with a glamorous court life and lavish feasts. Traditional Dutch restaurants from the south are still referred to as Bourgondisch, alluding to the luxurious meals of yesteryear.
17th century
As the Dutch Republic entered its Golden Age, lavish dishes became available to the wealthy middle class as well. The Dutch East India Company monopolised the trade in nutmeg, clove, mace and cinnamon, provided in 1661 more than half of the refined sugar consumed in Europe, and was the first to import coffee on a large scale to Europe, popularising the concept of coffee houses for the masses. Apart from coffee, tea became a daily commodity, which was served with candy, marzipan and cookies. The availability of cheaper spices resulted in a tradition of spiced cookies, called speculaas.
Initially spices were used to indicate social status, but this disappeared with the influx of spices in Dutch market, and it was the elite who were the first to ban the frequent use of spices. The cookbook De Verstandige Kok (or The Reasonable Chef), published in 1667, reflects this, and further more shows that meal started with green salads and cold or warm cooked vegetables with dressing, butter, herbs or edible flowers, and continued with numerous fish and meat dishes, including exotic ingredients such as dates, rice, cinnamon, ginger and saffron. Savoury tarts and pastries followed, and the meal ended with jellies, cheese, nuts and sweet pastries, washed down with hippocras, a sweet spiced wine.De verstandige kok. Marleen Willebrands But in the Golden Age, the everyday meal of the ordinary Dutchman was still a humble affair of grain or legume pottage served with rye.
18th–21st centuries In the early 19th century, the staples for the working population, most of whom suffered from some form of malnutrition, were bread (rye bread in some areas) and potato (introduced from South America). A working-class family at this time may have also eaten pancakes, occasionally herring and other fish, fruit, vegetables, and little meat. They drank water of poor quality, watery coffee (or chicory), or tea. In some areas hot chocolate was consumed, but the most popular drinks were beer (predominantly in the Catholic south) and jenever, of which the consumption was twice that of the equivalent consumption of distilled spirits in neighbouring countries.
In the 20th century, the availability of mass education meant that girls could be sent to the Huishoudschool (housekeeping school) to be taught to cook cheap and simple meals, leading to an increasingly uniform and plain Dutch diet. However, initially influenced by the eating culture of its colonies (particularly the Indonesian cuisine), and later by globalization, the diet changed significantly, and became cosmopolitan. Most international cuisines are represented in the major cities and there is a renewed interest in taste, which is reflected in the 119 Michelin-starred restaurants in the country.
Origins Dutch agriculture roughly consists of five sectors: greenhouse-based, tillage-based, fruit agriculture, animal husbandry and fishery.
Greenhouses are used to produce tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and sweet peppers. The Netherlands has shown itself to be the standard-bearer of high-tech greenhouse technology. Wageningen University and Research are the primary architects of this technology, working 80 kilometers southeast of Amsterdam. The university is considered the top agricultural research institution in the world. Tillage-based crops include potatoes, kale, beetroot, green beans, carrots, celeriac, onions, all the common kinds of cabbages, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, endive, spinach, Belgian endive, asparagus and lettuce. Recently some initiatives have been started to encourage interest in such "forgotten" vegetables as common purslane, medlars, parsnips, and black salsify. Fruits include apples, pears, cherries, berries, and plums. The Dutch keep cattle for milk, butter, cheese, and for their meat, chickens for their eggs and for meat, pigs for their meat and a variety of non-edible products, and sheep for their wool and meat. Goats are increasingly kept for cheese production. Traditionally, horse meat was a common dish (steak, sausage, and thinly sliced smoked meat), but it is less popular today. The fishery sector lands cod, herring, European plaice, sole, mackerel, eels, tuna, salmon, trout, oysters, mussels, shrimp, and sardines. The Dutch are famous for their smoked eel and soused herring, which is eaten raw.
Regional Many food origins can be traced back to one of the three general regional forms of Dutch cuisine. Some agricultural products and foodstuffs from these regions are protected by EU law as Protected designation of origin, like jenever, Noord-Hollandse Gouda, and kanterkaas (cumin cheese and clove cheese), Traditional speciality guaranteed, like boerenkaas (farmer's cheese) and Hollandse nieuwe (soused herring), and the less strict variant of Protected geographical indication, like Edam Holland and Limburgse vlaai.
Western cuisine
Western Dutch cuisine is found in the provinces of North Holland, South Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht and the Gelderlandic region of Betuwe. Due to the abundance of flat grassland and accessible freshwater sources, this region is ideal for raising cattle and is known for its many dairy products. Historically, the direct access to the sea made fish readily available, as well as spices, coffee, chocolate and sugar shipped from the overseas colonies.
The butter produced by Zeeland and South Holland contains a larger amount of milkfat than most other European varieties, resulting in a regional cuisine with a wide variety of rich, buttery flavoured pastry. Cookies of all sorts are produced in great number and tend to contain much butter and sugar. The stroopwafel is well known, as are cookies with a filling of some kind, mostly almond, like gevulde koek. Pastries in this area also tend to be quite doughy and to contain large amounts of sugar, either caramelised, powdered or crystallised. The oliebol (in its modern form) and Zeeuwse bolus are good examples. Duivekater is a moist doughy white bread from the Zaanstreek in North Holland which is eaten with butter; the recipe goes back hundreds of years.
A by-product of the butter-making process, buttermilk (karnemelk) is typically used in this region's cuisine. Leyden cheese, spiced with cumin and traditionally produced with skimmed milk, can also be considered a by-product in the same way. Traditional farm-made Leyden cheese from this region has been given a protected designation of origin.
For centuries this region has provided prominent Dutch cheeses, named after the cities where each cheese was sold. Recorded history of Gouda cheese arguably starts in 1184, making it one of the oldest cheeses that is still in production using its original recipe. Edam cheese, traditionally produced in small waxed spheres, has been made since the 14th century. These cheeses are made with full-fat milk, and thus they are not by-products of butter production; the young varieties have a milky flavour.