“It was as if I really found my home, through the handwriting in cookery manuscripts and the way they address the reader as a grandmother passing on recipes,” says Regula Ysewijn of the emotional journey she went on while researching her new book.
The Belgian food writer and photographer has had a decades-long passionate love for English food, poured into wonderful books such as Pride and Pudding and Oats in the North, Wheat from the South. But researching Dark Rye and Honey Cake, she says, opened her heart to the place where she was born.
Ysewijn’s new book is a treasure trove for anyone who loves baking: a parade of tempting recipes with introductions that share fascinating insights into their history (including 14 variations on the Belgian waffle!), beautifully told stories of festivals, traditions and insights into the complicated history of the Low Countries (areas today known as Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg), and specifically the centre of the Low Countries, the area where she was born. A place, she explains with engaging honesty in the book, that had failed to capture her heart in the way the food and history of Britain had done.
Dark Rye and Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn Source: Regula Ysewijn / Murdoch Books
Until it did. It’s clear, reading Dark Rye and Honey Cake, that over the past seven or so years, baking became her pathway home, a discovery of rich traditions and beautiful recipes.
“Every cookbook and manuscript I read took a little part of the heart I had locked away from my country,” she writes in the book.
SBS Food chatted to Ysewijn about baking her way home, fascinating food names (wolf canal bread, we’re looking at you!) and – of course – Belgian waffles.
You write in the book that you found “a pathway home” through collecting and exploring centuries-old cookbooks. Is there a memory that especially stands out from when you were diving into all those wonderful old books?
You always think you know your own culture, you’re born into it, right? From childhood I’ve had a fascination for Britain, resulting in my four books about British food. But while I was “training to be British” as my British friends always say with a laugh and always looking at Britain reading English books, and watching BBC, I was actually no longer looking at home and lost that connection apart from a few things that I’ve had in my life early on, like the waffles on the streets of Antwerp, thick fluffy waffles for New Year in a tearoom, pancakes for Candlemas and prune pie for Ash Wednesday.
I didn’t explore Belgian baking as I did with British baking, I didn’t go digging. But once I did start digging it was as if I really found my home, through the handwriting in cookery manuscripts and the way they address the reader as a grandmother passing on recipes, something I don’t have from my own grandmother or mother. The culinary history of my country showed me there is beauty while before I only saw the annoying things like complicated politics and the way we as a country remain so divided because we have three language regions that have a hard time finding common ground. I hope this book will be a bridge between those language regions and communities, that it will show us that we are more alike in our baking habits and tastes than we imagined and that there are no borders between us even though our politicians keep our division alive.
The research for my book erased those language borders I so loathed growing up and didn’t understand. The only thing that hurts is that no French publisher has yet bought the rights to translate my book in French so my French-speaking countrymen can read it. Dutch is not common in our French language region and English isn’t spoken at all so for the book to be a bridge, I need someone to translate it to French so it can be read and hopefully bring other people a much-needed pathway home.
Get the recipe for tarte al djote - an egg and greens tart descended from medieval times - .
Source: Regula Ysewijn / Murdoch Books
There are many things to love about your essay on Belgian waffles in the book, and the fact that you have included recipes for 14 waffle variations! What surprised you most in the deep dive into waffle history that you did for the book?
It was the number of waffle recipes I could count in early cookery books and precious handwritten manuscripts and the diversity because it is that diversity in waffles that we still have in our culture today. As far back as the 16th century there are thick ones, thin ones, split ones, hard ones and soft ones and seeing the ancestors of the recipes that have become iconic waffles through the centuries made me feel like discovering actual family ancestors to me.
Get the recipe for 'Regula's waffles', one of 14 variations in the book, .
Source: Regula Ysewijn / Murdoch Books
The names of recipes can be as interesting as how they look and taste – such as the ‘pain a la grecque’ aka wolf canal bread, which not only has two great names, but a double identity, of sorts, a biscuit made with bread dough, and dusted with sugar crystals. Is that crisp, like a cracker, or is it chewy, like thin bread?
Some of the names of bakes are alien to people today unless you are in the know about food history. There is the festive ‘Vollaard’ loaf which often features in Flemish art, baked with clay folk art shields onto it which is almost extinct and its name lost in history. Another festive loaf related to the Vollaard is de Duivekater, which we can try to translate but it will never be correct as even historians don’t understand the name. Lukken waffles were made to “wish luk” or “luck”, they are after all New Year’s waffles, thin, buttery and crisp, baked to hand out to family and friends to wish them luck for the new year. Families would set up a baking factory of some sort in their homes and everyone, even the little ones, helped with baking a large number of waffles, the baked ones all laid out on wire racks around the living room and kitchen to cool.
Wolf canal bread was made from bread dough with lots of sugar pressed into it which caramelises in the oven and turns the bread into an addictive biscuit that is in places slightly chewy and in other places crisp and hard, also depending on when it was baked.
Get the recipe for wolf canal bread .
Source: Regula Ysewijn / Murdoch Books
Reading a deep dive into a country’s baking like this reminds us that often, there are no neat categories for recipes. Something can be biscuit and bread, like the ‘canal bread’, and a tart can be a bun, like the vaution de Verviers (as you say ‘basically a huge cinnamon bun’). That must be a challenge when researching a book like this, and trying to figure out where a recipe might have come from, or how it has evolved – so many similar things appearing under different names?
Recreating historical and traditional recipes which aren’t common today, or not from my region so I’m not familiar with them, is exciting because, especially with historical recipes, you just don’t know what it will be until you’ve studied the recipe, there are no pictures, hardly ever are there clues to how it looks or tastes. Also categorising recipes by the type under a heading wasn’t common in early cookery books and even after category titles appeared people weren’t stressed about it too much, so I am not either. I just tried to keep them grouped in a way that people would find handy.
Get the recipe for Vaution de Verviers .
Source: Regula Ysewijn / Murdoch Books
One of the threads in the book is how a lot of Low Countries baking is closely tied to festivals and special days, but luckily we can make these any time we like. What recipes from the book have now become part of your ‘everyday’ baking?
I’m going to be honest with you, while during the pandemic I baked every day, I don’t now! But when I get the chance to bake I will choose one of the recipes from Dark Rye and Honey Cake because I feel like they are a part of my history as a Belgian person and I feel really strongly about them. Regula’s waffles are the recipe that I’ve made since I was a small child, labelling boxes of them “Regula’s waffles” to gift to the family.
Get the recipe for dikke speculaas - like a chewy gingerbread cake - .
Source: Regula Ysewijn / Murdoch Books
The “dikke speculaas” (thick speculaas) is a recipe gifted to me by a pub landlord, he used to make it with his grandchildren and now I make it often too because it is fuss-free and kids can really dig in and they love it too. I used to only bake my no-recipe pancakes but since the book, I’ve made the buckwheat pancakes more too.
In any way you look at it, I’ve reconnected with my country through exploring the baking culture and baking, eating and gifting bakes away to my friends and neighbours who all got to taste a little of my journey too, and with it, like me, gaining more respect to our own baking culture, which we took for granted, as we often do when things are too familiar.
Images from , photography by Regula Ysewijn (Murdoch Books, $55).
