Serves 4:

• 2 kg finest white asparagus
• 20 g salt
• small new potatoes to taste, scraped
• 4 eggs
• 8 thick slices cooked ham (not smoked)
• 100 g butter
• grated nutmeg
• parsley

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Early in the last century a priest, who was looking for a way to make money for his poor parishioners from the sandy soil in his parish, brought the white asparagus to the province of Limburg. Nowadays in Limburg as well as in Brabant there is an Asparagus Society which is organising peeling competitions and asparagus feasts. An asparagus museum in Horst explains everything about cultivation. From the middle of May the ‘asparagus road’ N271 in Limburg is dotted with stalls and restaurants specialising in asparagus. A solemn mass is celebrated in St Jan’s Cathedral in ‘s Hertogenbosch on June 24 to bid the vegetable farewell: Houdoe asperge!

Serves 4:

• 400 g dried marrowfat peas
• 1 ½ l water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 100 g smoked bacon or pickled beef in thin strips
• 15 g  butter
• 150 g finely cut leek, onion, carrot and white cabbage
• 1 teaspoon salt

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Word has it that the captain of a Groningen coaster invented ‘Captain’s dinner’. He was  the owner of the ship, but didn’t have two pennies to rub against each other. Dried marrowfats were healthy and cheap. To give his crew a good example he joined them for the  meal occasionally, but adorned it with several titbits to his own taste. Hence the name.

However, we do have much earlier references to this sailor’s food. Grey peas – akin to marrowfats – featured on the menu of the East and West Indiamen in the 17^th century. “At Sunday lunch time each man gets half a pound of smoked bacon, or one pound of beef or mutton and grey peas as many as everyone desires”. Three drams a day and “light ale to their liking”. But wine for the captain.

This is one of the dishes Dutch expatriates like to serve when they feel a bit homesick. But not only there. In the nineties of last century the humble pea was served with champagne and even a vegetarian version was created. But of course we present the true tar’s original here: ‘with all the trimmings’.

Serves 4:

• 500 g green split peas
• 2,5 litres water
• 500 g fresh arm picnic / knuckle
• 250 g sirloin chops / spare rib chops
• 250 lean salt pork in one piece
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 100 g onion, peeled
• 200 g leek (white only)
• 300 g peeled celeriac
• 250 g smoked sausage
• pepper
• 40 g celery leaves
• 8 slices of black rye bread
• mustard

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The porridge-like Dutch pea soup has a long history. In the first Dutch cookbook (1514) it is a sieved pea porridge, thickened with bread crumbs and seasoned with cumin, saffron and fried onions or other spices. Food, meat included, was cooked in one pot and therefore it was always a more or less thick soup.

As dried peas were fare for the common man, later books do not record recipes. But we know that orphans and students were often served green peas, with or without meat. Pulses were an important part of the victuals on ships and pea soup stayed popular during the 18^th and 19^th century, as it was the only dish cooks at sea could brew reasonably well.

Today it is the signature winter dish of the Netherlands, connected with skating fun on the frozen lakes and canals, where it is sold in stalls. But that does not prevent people in the warm Netherlands Antilles to serve their own version to which they add a piece of hot pepper. Just as in Surinam it is ladled over a  pudding of baked bananas.

Here I present a slightly adapted version from The Perfect Holland Kitchenmaid (1791). She served it with bread sippets. Today it is accompanied by black ryebread.

Serves two:

• unpeeled small potatoes,
• as needed
• knob of butter, salt
• 20 g concentrated butter
• 2 level tbsp plain flour
• 200 ml milk
• 75 ml Madeira
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• 2 x 100 g ham in slices

Side dish:

• knob of butter
• 2 coarsely cut scallions
• 200 g frozen peas,
• thawed under hot water
• 1 little gem, finely cut

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Skinke med madeira from Denmark. There you can find several traditional dishes with Madeira, dated from the time that the country ruled the Danish West Indies. Sold in 1816 and now known as the American Virgin Islands. In those days there was always a Danish war frigate posted in the Caribbean Sea, which was relieved every six months. On its voyage home it stopped off at the harbour of Madeira, where a considerable cargo of this sea proof wine was loaded.

The predilection for pork is older. According to myth, warriors cut down in battle were every evening treated in the Walhalla by the god Odin to a roast of Saerimmer, a magic swine. It grew always fresh meat for the next evening.

Now that the Danes have become the most important exporters of pork in the world, everybody fortunate enough to buy their product can image himself gorging Saerimmer in the Walhalla.

• 500 g parsnips
• pepper, salt
• wheat flour
• quite a bit of breadcrumbs
• 2 tbsp. butter 1
• 100 g sliced ​​bacon
• watercress (or lamb’s lettuce)
• lemon wedges

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Parsnip cakes from Ireland. In the mid-19th century, Irish and English Quakers (The Society of Friends) organised food aid in the form of soup kitchens after the failed potato harvests – the only food for a third of the Irish population. They also ensured that parsnips, carrots, turnips and cabbage were sown to protect the country from hunger in the future. A number of them made such an effort to achieve this that they had to pay for it with an early death. But because of their efforts, the ‘cottage gardens’ were full of a variety of crops by the end of the century. Here a culinary tribute to those Quakers.

Traditionally the Irish have been fond of what you can pick in the wild, such as watercress. “Though mead and princely malt may be desirable for the infirm, dry bread and watercress are the food becoming the wise” is an old Celtic saying. But apparently not all Irish wanted to be that wise, as this traditional combination shows.