Meet our incredible culinary historian: Manon Henzen!

If you are a regular reader of our magazines Ancient History and Medieval World: Culture & Conflict, you have probably already come across (and maybe even tasted) the work of our incredible culinary expert, Manon Henzen. Manon is a culinary historian and writer (www.eat-history.com). Below is a bit about her along with a special holiday recipe.

About Manon, from Manon:

"After studying History and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands, I became more and more interested in the history of food. As a passionate cook and adventurous eater, I specialized in the history of food. During the first ten years of my career, I worked for several museums and heritage organizations in The Netherlands, while researching culinary history. I was very curious about how the past must have tasted, and started to cook from historical cookbooks. This gave me so much more insight into what happened in the kitchen, how food was prepared, and in the end, how it probably or maybe must have tasted.

I wanted to share my knowledge and experience with people. If I, and my friends who were willing to taste my historical dishes at dinner parties, enjoyed it so much, maybe other people would, too. That’s why, in 2011, I started eet!verleden (eat!history). I started to write and blog about culinary history, as well as organize historical dinner parties. After a year, I opened a historical cooking studio. I now organize historical cooking classes, lectures, tastings, and all kinds of events!

Unfortunately, this year I closed the historical cooking studio. Due to the COVID pandemic, I couldn’t run cooking classes and other events for almost two years. So I created other activities, like online cooking classes and historical cooking weeks in Italy and France. This allowed me more time for research and writing. Nowadays, there is this beautiful mix of activities through which I share my knowledge and passion, and let people enjoy culinary history. 

Medieval recipe manuscripts are among my favorites in the history of cookbooks. A lot of medieval recipes are very inspiring for our modern kitchen. We can learn a lot from these books about the use of spices, the combinations of ingredients or flavourings, textures in a dish, and the efforts that they make to create beautiful meals. This is what I try to express in my recipe articles for the magazines Ancient History and Medieval World. I hope my work will inspire you to spice up your daily dish with a splash of history."

Manon's Holiday Recipe (featured in MWCC.4):

Poultry pie with marzipan

I am guessing that you do not have a swan, peacock, partridge, or pheasant at hand easily. Maybe you can get a goose, a duck, or a couple of doves instead. Otherwise use chicken for this recipe. The birds on the pies in the picture are made by the Natural History Museum in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. I work and research with them to recreate historical pies. I lend these pies to museums and castles for educational purposes. This recipe is from a sixteenth-century Italian cookbook. The sweet and savoury flavour combination is typical for this period. You will be pleasantly surprised by the taste.

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 250 g flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 125 g cold butter
  • 1 tsp rose water
  • a bit of cold water

Filling

  • 1 cleaned bird (head and legs removed)
  • 10 slices of bacon
  • 50 g almonds
  • 50 g sugar
  • 2 tsp rose water (for the marzipan)
  • 2 tsp cinnamon powder
  • 1 tsp clove powder
  • 1 tsp nutmeg powder
  • 2 tsp ginger powder
  • 1 tsp rose water (for the filling)
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 50 g butter, in small cubes
  • 1 extra egg, for brushing the pie

Preparation

To make the pastry dough, put flour, salt, and butter into a bowl and chop the butter into small pieces with a knife. Add rose water and a bit of cold water. Quickly knead into a dough. Put the dough in the fridge while you make the filling.

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Fry the bird all over in butter in a frying pan. Put the bird in a greased baking dish and cover it with slices of bacon. Bake in the oven for about 60+ minutes until cooked. Remove the bird from the oven and turn the oven temperature up to 200 degrees.

Put the almonds and sugar in a food processor and grind until fine in texture. Add 2 teaspoons of rose water and stir briefly. This is the marzipan.

Mix cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger together in a bowl. Pluck all the meat from the cooked bird and cut it into small pieces. Put this in a bowl. Add the spice mixture, extra rose water, butter, and beaten eggs. Mix everything well.

Line a baking tray with two-thirds of the pastry dough, rolled out. Add half of the bird mixture. Spread the marzipan over it. Add the rest of the bird mixture. Make a lid on the pie from the remaining dough and decorate it with dough figures. Brush the top with a beaten egg. Bake the pie in the oven for about 45 minutes. Enjoy!