Comments on: Coq Au Vin: History, Tips and Ultimate Recipe

By: Johan Johansen

Johan Johansen — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 11:27:52 +0000

Marilyn,

Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed the recipe and found it the best to date. Also, I appreciate hearing your personal touches and suggestions, I’ll have to remember those for when COV season returns. I thrills me to no end when people take the time to not only make my recipes but to also play with them and make them their own.

Thanks for putting a huge smile on my face! 🙂

By: Marilyn

Marilyn — Sat, 27 Apr 2019 18:54:56 +0000

Dear Johan, Thank you very much for this excellent Coq au Vin recipe, which I made yesterday (4-26-19). It received rave reviews from my dinner guests, all who enjoy fine food greatly. While making this dish was a bit of work, it was well worth it. I have made COV quite a few times over the years and this recipe is the best. I made only three small changes:
1. included leek and flat-leaf parsley in the Bouquet Garni
2. included several cloves of fresh garlic, smashed
3. included 1/2 oz of dry porcini mushrooms along with the cremini mushrooms
I served a Jura Trousseau wine with the COV (Domaine Rolet arbois, 2012). I marinated the chicken using this same wine. We all thought the Trousseau, although good, was a bit light for this dish.
This will be my go-to recipe for the future – thanks again very much!!

By: Johan

Johan — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 07:57:54 +0000

In reply to Tekla Bach.

Tekla, thank you so much for that wonderfully insightful comment and your thoughts. I couldn’t have said it much better myself. I was surprised not to find more history on the dish, but I suspect the originis may be along the lines of what you’ve said here.

Oddly enough, in my family, Øllebrød was always a breakfast dish, I was a little surprised to venture out into the world and see people treat it as dessert 🙂

By: Tekla Bach

Tekla Bach — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 20:29:27 +0000

As with the history of all cooking maybe the origin is not one place, but has been build up through the practise of many a households. Brought about by necessity, taught to daughters and maids who moved on and braught it to new places and then have become commonly used. At some point someone saw fit to write it down in one form or another and others did so as well. Meanwhile it continued to evolve as times and available raw materials changed.

As a cook for a medeival group i see this very often. Recepies have been writen down long after the medeival times, but archeological finds show similar combinations of herbs and grains used in medeival times. So it is accepted that it’s made in a similar way.

Sometimes you also have to set yourself in their place. Did they use theese things according to sources and would they have combined them if times were tough. If yes, then they probably did, whether or not written sources or physical evidence exists. They were amaizingly creative with what they had. So maybe it’s all a part of the same story, leading to the very defined dish we have today. Wee just don’t have the intermediate parts linking the story together.

The danish dish øllebrød is mentioned for the first time around the year 1100 and is just explained as breadcrusts and dry bread leftovers mixed with beer leftovers from the dinnertable mixed in a cauldron and boiled up the next morning over the fire. Over time it became more defined and the kind of bread and beer used were defined. Today it’s reviered as a dessert but it began as a breakfast that used up alle leftovers but was also filled with energy, for a good start in the morning.