[Sca-cooks] The Dutch (food cvontent)

[Terry Decker]

> In 1596 at a coffee and tea merchant's shop in Amsterdam, they recorded 
> that
> "the first Dutch man to drink coffee, one Professor Clusius" tasted the
> brew... they didn't record how it was prepared and served, so far as I can
> find, however he had been the man who founded the Hortus Bontanicus just
> three years before that so one assumes he liked experimenting with the
> advantages of new plants.
>

You got the source for the above quote?  Carolus Clusius (Charles de 
L'Ecluse) is a major figure in 16th Century botany and while he experimented 
with a number of different foodstuffs, but I doubt he was the first Dutch 
man to drink coffee or that it was in 1596.  Pieter van dan Broecke is 
usually given as the first Hollander to bring coffee into the Low Countries 
in 1616.  While commercial import of coffee didn't occur until 1640 by a 
merchant named Wurffbain.  The first mention of tea in English is in 
Linschooten's Travels (1597) and the import of tea into England and Holland 
didn't begin until the mid-17th Century, so the story doesn't hang together.

> In 1574, the town of Leiden had been under siege for 131 by the Spanish.
> William of Orange ordered the sluice gates opened during a storm and 
> fearing
> drowning, the Spanish broke camp and departed. A boy climbed into the
> besieger's ramparts and found a pot of beef and vegetables. Every October
> third, the people of Leiden prepare this dish to celebrate their 
> liberation.
>   in 1587, The Hortus Botanicus, a botanical garden in the University
> Quarter was stocked with plants brought back from the East Indies and the
> Americas.

Clusius became the first director of the Leiden Botanical Gardens.  His 
first major work was a herbal of the plants of Spain done while he was a 
tutor.  He had been director of the Imperial Botanical Gardens in Vienna, 
had a falling out with Emperor Rudolf II, then spent some time working on 
botanical publications in the German States before moving to Leiden, IIRC.

Bear