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EveryMasala

Spices of Amsterdam

The home of the Dutch East India Company, which dominated the nutmeg, mace and clove trade in the seventeenth century.

Amsterdam

Traded and grown here

NutmegCloveSpeculaasMace (spice)

Best time: April to September.

Amsterdam was the base of the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602. The company took control of the clove, nutmeg and mace trade from the Moluccas and Banda, and the canal houses of the city were built on the profits.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. The satellite photo contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA.
Photo: ESA (European Space Agency), Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons

Spices and trade

The Dutch have kept a taste for spice, seen in speculaas, the spiced biscuit, pepernoten, kruidnoten and gingerbread. Indonesian food, from the colonial link, is popular, and the rijsttafel is a well-known feast.

The place and its people

Dutch cooking mixes native dishes with Indonesian and Surinamese ones. The history of the colonial trade is told in museums, including the Scheepvaartmuseum.

Visiting

The Maritime Museum and the old canal ring give the context. Speculaas is sold around the Sinterklaas season in November and December.

A trail idea for Amsterdam

  1. Het Scheepvaartmuseum See the maritime history.
  2. A bakery Taste speculaas.
  3. An Indonesian restaurant Try a rijsttafel.
  4. The canal ring Walk past the merchants' houses.
About this page

Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Amsterdam" on Wikipedia. Opening hours, markets and tours change; check locally before travelling. If something is wrong, tell us.

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