Archive for January, 2010
Hansje In Den Kelder: Old Dutch Birth Rituals
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
As in any other culture, in the Netherlands birth was long surrounded by rituals en superstitions. This is not surprising because giving birth was a life threatening activity. Reason enough to do whatever possible to humor the gods to protect mother and child. In this article we have collected some of the dutch birth traditions during the last three centuries…
Hansje In Den Kelder
Telling out loud that you were expecting a child was challenging evil spirits, at least so people thought in the 17th and 18thcentury. So you had to let family and friends know about the pregnancy without actually saying so. Upper-class families had a nice ceremony for this called Hansje In De Kelder (Little Henry In The Basement). Family and friends would be invited over for a drink. Then a special silver cup was put on the table. The cup had a little compartment in the middle (the basement, a metaphor for the womb) that would open when a liquid was poured into the cup, releasing a little silver baby figure (little Henry). In rich families this liquid was usually a special liquor consisting of Spanish and Sicilian lemons, Cherry esprit, Bourbon Vanilla, Cardamom, Cinnamon and Bulgarian Roses. The cup was passed around and while drinking everybody would cheerfully say Hansje in den kelder well knowing that a future family member had been announced.
The tradition was adopted by the middle class during the 18th century albeit with cheaper ingredients. The silver cup was replaced by an engraved glass and the liquor by ordinary or cinnamon wine. Around the 19th century the tradition had died out.
What’s Cooking: Beschuit (Dutch Rusks)
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Photograph © Rik Andreae.
A beschuit is a typical Dutch rusk that is eaten at breakfast or lunch and especially at the birth of a baby. The idea of a preservable replacement for bread already existed in Roman times. Rome had a vast army that had to be fed. Bread was not practical on long marches since it would go stale within a few days. The reason for this is that bread contains too much moist making it a perfect breading soil for fungae.
But if you bake the bread twice you substract virtually all moist from it. The hard, dry cookies that result from this baking proces can be kept fresh for weeks. The romans called the cookie biscotum, meaning baked twice, after the baking process.
Through the French word bis cuit it became the English word biscuit and the Dutch word beschuit.
Beschuit became very popular in the Netherlands during the 17th century and became the basic food for every long overseas sailing trip. This scheepsbeschuit was very different from the beschuit you can buy in shops today. The biscuits were very hard and could only be eaten when soaked in liquid first like tea or milk.
From Daalder To Dollar: How Dutch Influenced American English
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
What could be more American than the dollar, proudly showing the images of great American presidents like Lincoln, Jefferson and Roosevelt. But few Americans are aware of its very European roots.
The American dollar was born in 1792 as a result of the Coinage Act of that same year. It was modeled after the most popular trade coin of that moment: the Spanish dollar. But it did not take its name from it. Actually the Spanish named their coin a real de a ocho or eight real coin.
So where did this word dollar come from? It was derived from the Germanic word thaler, which is short for Joachimsthaler meaning from the Joachim valley (thal). This Bohemian valley was famous in the 16th century for its great silver mines. The coins made from this silver were known to be very pure and therefore soon became extremely popular as an export currency throughout Europe.
