In the early seventeenth century many artists from the Northern Netherlands produced kitchen scenes, of which the quality, quantity and diversity amaze us even to the present day. These paintings were developed in competition with their famous predecessors from both antiquity and the sixteenth century, and partly inspired by their contemporaries from the Southern Netherlands. It is demonstrated that the process of development of new types of images after 1600 received a powerful impetus from the influx of immigrants from the Southern Netherlands, which included many painters of food as well as a considerable part of a new audience. Not only was the Southern Netherlandish custom of surrounding oneself with paintings of different price categories, including kitchen scenes and other images of food, imitated by the local population, this also generated a demand for paintings of higher quality, that is, technically more skilful, more life-like and more interesting and attractive in terms of their inventiveness.