Why go
Butter and cheese connect the table with Holland and Friesland’s low-lying grasslands. Herring preservation connects it with fishing and export, while spiced biscuits reflect access to imported ingredients. These links make ordinary foods useful clues to economic history, rather than isolated national specialities with a single neat origin story.
The full story
Medieval meals in the Low Countries often centred on pottage, a partly liquid mixture whose ingredients could include grain, peas, root vegetables and sometimes meat. What went into the pot changed with the seasons. Milk from the grasslands of Holland and Friesland was used to make butter and cheese, linking food preservation with the landscape. Monasteries grew herbs and vegetables, and gardens also developed around castles and country houses. Fish from rivers and the sea supplied another part of the diet. Preserving herring supported export, connecting a practical way of keeping food with a wider trading economy. By the seventeenth century, wealthy households could draw on a broader range of fruit, cheeses, meat, wine and nuts. Colonial commerce brought spices, sugar and other imported products through systems of exploitation. Tea and coffee became more established, accompanied by sweets and biscuits. Speculaas belongs to this history of spiced baking. The contrast with the limited drinks available to many poor nineteenth-century households shows how unevenly those changes were shared.