Dutch cuisine is formed from the cooking traditions and practices of the Netherlands. The country's cuisine is shaped by its location on the fertile Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta at the North Sea, giving rise to fishing, farming, and overseas trade. Due to the availability of water and flat grassland, the Dutch diet contains many dairy products such as butter and cheese. The court of the Burgundian Netherlands enriched the cuisine of the elite in the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th century, a process continued in the 17th and 18th centuries thanks to colonial trade. At this time, the Dutch ruled the spice trade, played a pivotal role in the global spread of coffee, and started the modern era of chocolate by developing the Dutch process of first removing fat from cocoa beans using a hydraulic press, creating cocoa powder, and then alkalizing it to make it less acidic and more palatable.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dutch food and food production was designed to be more efficient, an effort so successful that the country became the world's second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. It gave the Dutch the reputation of being the feeders of the world, but Dutch food, such as stamppot, of having a bland taste. However, influenced by the eating culture of its colonies (particularly Indonesian cuisine), and later by globalization, there is a renewed focus on taste, which is also reflected in the 119 Michelin-starred restaurants in the country.

Dutch cuisine can traditionally be divided in three regions. The northeast of the country is known for its meats and sausages (rookworst, metworst) and heavy rye bread, the west for fish (smoked eel, soused herring, kibbeling, mussels), spirits (jenever) and dairy-based products (stroopwafel, boerenkaas), and the south for stews (hachée), fruit products and pastry (Limburgse vlaai, apple butter, bossche bol). A peculiar characteristic for Dutch breakfast and lunch is the sweet bread toppings such as hagelslag, vlokken, and muisjes, and the Dutch are the highest consumers of liquorice in the world.

Early cookbooks for the elite picture a homogeneous food culture across Europe. Differences were in the use of what was locally available; milk and butter—from the low-lying grasslands of Holland and Friesland—were used in the Netherlands, in comparison to bacon fat used in German countries and England, and oil in Southern Europe. Dutch butter and cheese continued to be famous products for centuries. The common people ate half-liquid brij or porridge, potage (consisting of root vegetables, peas, herbs, meat and fish) and soppe (vegetable/meat/fish paste, thickened with bread). The characteristically thick Dutch pea soup snert eaten with rye bread was indebted to this medieval tradition.

Beer flavoured with gruit was the common drink as water was of poor quality, and was produced until the 14th century at the monasteries. The replacement of gruit for hop, a German innovation, extended shelf life, turning the Low Countries into a major beer exporter. It still is the largest beer exporter of Europe. Brand, established in 1349, is the country's oldest beer brand.

In the 14th century gibbing was invented by Willem Beukelszoon, extending the shelf life of herring, making it possible to sail further and catch more. It created a booming export industry for and a monopoly in soused herring (Dutch: maatjesharing), and sat the foundation for the later seafaring and colonial Dutch Empire. The Dutch still celebrate Vlaggetjesdag (Flag Day) each spring, when fishermen go out to sea to capture the annual herring catch: Hollandse Nieuwe.

Vegetable Gardens were used by monasteries and later by castles for their own kitchens. Keukenhof (literally kitchen garden, but now a flower park) is such an example. Orchards for pears and apples connected to castles were later used for export and set off a Dutch horticulture tradition that remains to this day. In the castles, which have hunting grounds as well, haute cuisine began to emerge, and in 1510, the first Dutch-language cook book, aimed at the upper class, was printed in Brussels, called Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen (A notable book of cookery). It offers recipes for festivities, such as sauces, game, jellies, fish, meat, pies, eggs, dairy products, candied quinces and ginger, and contains one of the world's oldest known recipes for appeltaerten, apple pie. The recipes come from various sources, such as the French recipe book Le Viandier, reflecting the close ties between Dutch cuisine and the northern French cuisine, as the whole region was part of the Burgundian Netherlands, with a glamorous court life and lavish feasts. Traditional Dutch restaurants from the south are still referred to as Bourgondisch, alluding to the luxurious meals of yesteryear.

As the Dutch Republic entered its Golden Age, lavish dishes became available to the wealthy middle class as well. The Dutch East India Company monopolised the trade in nutmeg, clove, mace and cinnamon, provided in 1661 more than half of the refined sugar consumed in Europe, and was the first to import coffee on a large scale to Europe, popularising the concept of coffee houses for the masses. Apart from coffee, tea became a daily commodity, which was served with candy, marzipan and cookies. The availability of cheaper spices resulted in a tradition of spiced cookies, called speculaas.