Max is Waaay better, and his manners are much better. I cringed every time he slapped his chops.. I feel like they have tried to rip him off with this, they even used the same quotes, but they failed miserably.
For all the stuff Mr Snow is subjecting himself to, he didn't eat leather on camera (and if you are reading this Dan, DON'T), Max did =x ...although tbh, if I had a choice between jellied eel, and a leather bootstraps.... I fold, I'll have a grilled cheese haha Love both channels, not taking sides lol I like food and I like history 🤓
I laid on that bed and walked that exact room a few months ago! I travelled from Texas to Butser Farm and got there on a day they closed for staff training! The group were SO NICE! All the staff invited us in to have the whole place to ourselves while they freshened up their knowledge. Regularly checked in on us to make sure our questions were answered and we had a good time! I will never forget that place. Recognized your set immediately
In Germany during WW II cigarettes again became the main currency on the black market. Almost everybody started smoking, sometimes even children. Because nicotin would calm your shattered nerves after an air raid and even dull the feeling of constant hunger. That was certainly unhealthy, but at a time when you felt you could die any minute, a longterm healthy lifestyle seemed less urgent.
I kept thinking the same thing. I don't know why the upper class food was so poorly prepared. I get that if you're juggling all the work of running a household and possibly having some craft to bring in income that cooking would be just a get it done thing, but if cooking is your whole job . . .
There's a dish in Newfoundland (pronounced as Neu - FAEN - land, the 1st "d" is silent whereas the 2nd "d" is pronounced) that uses hard tack called Fish & Brewis (pronounced as Bruse), it's either soaked or boiled with potatoes & veggies or boiled then fried. Each Newfie family has their own recipe for using hard tack.
Yup. You break em up like crackers and pour soup over them. Or stew. When they sodften they're fine. I used to love them as a kid. My mom made them for when I went out riding my horse.
I think there's one aspect missing here. Dan Snow is not starving. He does not exert himself from sun up to sun down with hard manual labour. He does not walk miles back and forth every day. For those soldiers in the trenches, for the poor in Victorian UK , the food they ate everyday that tastes terrible to us today would be normal and heartening to them. They would be grateful and thankful that they had those to eat when faced with starvation.
Also a lot of these dishes weren't shown at their best, pottage as I understand it was not preferred cold, it was almost always eaten hot like a modern soup, and it almost always included local herbs and whatever flavorings were available. Depending on the time and place it would have most often and wherever possible contained salt or something that had been preserved in salt too. The posca had way too much vinegar in it if it was astringent, it was basically the ancient version of a cordial, a flavouring to make the water taste better, the vinegar should only be enough to make it a bit sour, no where near enough to make your throat sting. Pickled herring is gross though.
The Victorians certainly complained about the terrible adulteration of their bread and indeed laws were passed to correct the awful quality of bread and the terrible working conditions of British urban bakers. He doesn't do justice to a lot of the food here but Victorian urban bread was notoriously terrible in quality. American writers like Jack London comment on it when visiting London.
@@violetskies14he even said that the pottage was heated, even stewed over a fire for days as new ingredients were added (to replace what had been eaten) - and then ate it cold🤦
His trotters probably weren't cooked well enough either. When you're brought up to eat certain foods, they become a staple or even a delicacy. I was brought up eating offal (ox, maybe sheep, not pig mind 🤢 pig flavour is too strong) and rabbit (more like chicken than chicken) and love both. And most of what we ate were cheap cuts so now I have no particular desire to feast on expensive cuts (although I will try them before discounting them entirely and have never, absolutely not ever, been able to overcome a distaste for tripe - nope definitely not going there!). I really miss mutton.
Exactly! People back then weren't stupid! They would have cut slices and fried it. No different than bacon! Salty and good! Honestly same for the sheep feet, there are better ways to prepare these items. Then again we are talking Britain so maybe this was as good as it got. 😅
Not sure I can trust his tastes after seeing his reaction to spam. I slice and cook it in a pan but have eaten it cold on occasion. It’s still good. Tastes like a cold pork paté.
Pig trotters are actually a part of traditional dish among Eastern Europeans. It is cooked for long hours, better overnight, then cleaned from skin and bones, and the broth was divided on small portions and cooled in wells or basements where the T was never higher than 6-8C. The broth which is the collagen extract turns into jello, and was eaten with garlic or horseradish. People who had meat, added meat on the bottom on the jello form, also pepper or other spices, so they could get much more delicious jello, and it looked nice too. From biochemical point of view this dish is very fulfilling and healthy, because it’s a pure collagen, very well extracted from joints. Humans digest it easily, and it goes directly to build our skin and joints. BTW biochemically pigs are very close to humans, we even can use pigs’ organs as transplants. My friend who was a vegetarian for over 2 decades suffered from terrible joints pain, had to use a cane to walk. I recommended her to stop idiotic diet and eat collagen foods at least for 2 weeks… she refused, but after the pain became severe so she barely was able to walk, she did similar dish as I described earlier but used chicken feet, not pig’s. How long it took her to be able to walk as normal human, what do you think? 3 weeks. After that she decided to eat chicken ones a week.
My mother was from Germany, born in 1931. She used to make the best pigs feet. She made it flavored with a bit of bay leaf, caraway and a splash of vinegar. Delicious with spicy mustard and some rye bread. Also used to scrape the fat off and spread it on bread with a shake of salt.
There's a south asian dish that's extremely similar in concept, and mostly made by Muslims so it uses goat or bovine trotters instead of pig's feet. It's called Paya soup, and it's one hell of a hearty meal. I'd add that being south asia, spices are way cheaper and so its quite liberally seasoned. It's especially popular as a dish made by bakers for themselves and their labour, and rarely if ever, sold to outsiders. Bakers in these parts often work through the night, and when the rest of the city would wake for breakfast and demand fresh bread, they'd be exhausted and ending their workday. That soup and bread is one of those meals that hits you in the soul. If the baker shared his meal with you, it would be like him calling you family. The nutrition is also brilliant, especially if you're convalescent.
Chocolate and chili really will make you feel better, as chocolate contains psychoactive theobromine that makes you feel nice and capsaicin activates temperature regulating nerve cells in your gut, making you warmer as your metabolism speeds up a bit.
01:08:40 Ohhh the disrespect shown to SPAM😆You never eat it cold Dan, thats disgusting🤣You fry it up in thin slices and eat it with eggs or as a sandwich. Scramble some eggs, dice some SPAM up, add rice and seasoning, fry it all up together...delish!
My grandmother would fry Spam, and we would make sandwiches. They were delicious! I’m sure you know how much Spam is loved in Hawaii! Great video! I’m sending it to my sister the chef! 😊
I lived in Hawaii for several years and used to go to Zippy's to eat noodles with eggs and spam in it! I also had breakfast there too and it had Spam with scrambled eggs too. Awesome!
You have dripping completely wrong! It is the fat that is in the baking tin after a large piece of meat is roasted so it contains the flavor of the meat plus any spices or herbs rubbed into meat before cooking. Yes there was a layer of fat on top but I grew up in postwar Britain and we loved dripping spread on bread. Your father was right!
I grew up with what my mum called yorkshire pudding- pour flour/eggs/ milk mixture into the fat drippings in the tin from roasting the meat and bake- the best stuff ever! Still my favorite today. I've delighted many an American pallet with it. I grew up in America and have never understood why no Americans ever heard of this dish. I always assumed my mother brought it over from Britain. It was considered a delicacy served on holidays in our house when we would eat roast beef. The rest of the time we ate fish and spam. Though I do still love spam salads.
They make sweet breads in Argentina and it’s delicious. They make him in the grill until crispy and put lime on it. I have gotten a lot of American friends into it. It’s pretty good.
I was born end of the 60s. Our parents were WW2 kids (1 early teen, 1 small child). Products of the "Protestant work ethic", they ate what they were given and expected us to do the same. We had bread and dripping often (the Monday remnant of the small Sunday roast)... it was delicious! The way it is "served" with no effort in this programme is ridiculous drama. In reality: Toasted chunky brown bread, re-melted beef dripping, white pepper, salt.... and in the summer a tomato (home grown and ripened in the airing cupboard) and small chunk of cheese on the side. Simple and lovely!
You have brought back happy memories to me. I used to love bread and dripping and my favourite was pork dripping. Also bread fried in dripping, that was delicious. A favourite supper was a thick slice of fried drippjng bread, with fried tomatoes on it and an egg on the top. My mother always roasted a couple of onions with the pork, so the gravy and dripping had an onion taste too. I know a lot of people will cry that it was unhealthy, but I'm 72 and still here! My parents and grandparents lived into their 80s.
Damn so different to Native Americans, real Americans grow up eating tacos, tostadas, chili and tomato salsas, potatoes, and tons of slow cooked meats.
Did the person cooking the sheep and pig feet do it without any herbs or spices in the broth? And perhaps didn't cook long enough? These items should fall apart readily after cooking and having a strong flavor from the cooking liquid helps make the texture more palatable.
My dad used to love his bread and dripping, though my mum couldn't stand it. It brought her too many bad memories of childhood, incorporating aircraft falling out of the skies and respectful funerals for foreign and/or enemy pilots whose families would likely never get to visit the graves. Three decades after the war we used to eat spam sandwiches, with the block of spam cut into thin slices like luncheon meat and covered with pickles. I've never eaten it like that since I left home, but I do love spam grilled or fried and eaten as part of a full English or in a bap with a shit-ton (technical term) of brown sauce.
As a nipper in the 1960s my mum would take me to visit the grandparents at the weekend. My nan would give me dripping on toast. A big fat 'doorstop' piece of toast, proper butter and dripping. Along with some tea from the teapot, loose tea stewed to the max. I loved it. Dan here is having dripping on bread cold which I imagine wouldn't taste as good as it is warm/hot.
@@Devils-advocate78 Enjoying or disliking the taste of certain foods is highly influenced by the mental state you were in when eating them before. Similar to enjoying the smells of something like a freshly mown meadow because it unconsciously reminds you of that great vacation you had in your childhood. Taste and smell can bring you back to good times and bad times, causing you to dislike or like them. For instance, i only need to put a King mint in my mouth for relaxation as it brings me back to my childhood days going on walks or bike rides with my grandfather (he always had a roll of those mints in his pockets). On the other hand, I hate the taste of McDonald’s as that was I was eating when my first long time girlfriend dumped me (and probably because it’s crap anyway).
I imagine a lot of these would be a lot more palatable if they were actually warm (and been prepared properly). I can't imagine the potage would have been served cold and herbless back in the day.
It would be interesting to see if Dan's opinions would change if he revisted these foods with some "historical hunger" such as after fasting for a few days.
It wasn't that common for people to be starving. You talk as though it was the norm, which it certainly was not. The average field working peasant ate between 7,000-9,000 calories a day to get through 12-14 hour working days
@@jjboswell5043 My point was it didn't seem to add much educational value to watch Dan Snow try historical food and then tell us it tasted disgusting. It appeared that he needed some extra motivation to speak about these dishes in historical context. Much as you say people weren't starving; they also weren't including in their diets staple dishes that they thought tasted terrible..
You know, I have never ever once considered WHY there's pineapples everywhere on old timey stuff. Now I know. Also, I LOVE Spam but the thought of eating it cold from the can makes me feel ill haha
I'm glad at least one other person knows that. They are also meant to be grilled so the outside is crisp and caramelized. The ones he tasted appeared to have been boiled.🤢 It's unfortunate that whoever cooked them knew less about preparing them than they did about what they even were. I can only hope that they at least knew enough to clean and dress them correctly. I somehow doubt it, though
Believe or not, spam is extremely popular in Hawaii due to their experience with it in WW2. You can still get spam, egg, and cheese sandwiches for breakfast there.
Not just because of WWII. I'm Kānaka maoli, Polynesians already had a very pork centric cuisine and culture. We brought pig and chicken with us across the Pacific. Add that WWII and today's relative poverty of most Native Hawaiians (and local immigrants and other Polynesians) resulting in Spam being popular across the Pacific (Hawai'i, Samoa, Guam, Tonga, Marshall Islands, etc.) Spam is ono grinds too which helps!
I absolutely adore food history. Annie Gray is always one of my favorite guests on all history podcasts! Anything social history from shampooing your hair and keeping clean to what people eat is just right up my alley. Thank you so much for this video! It was also pretty hilarious 😅
I love how they included the stuff miserable soldiers and intentionally abstaining monks would eat and it was still better than the diet of the average person in victorian England. I swear, the more I learn about the period, the more it seems like the single worst time to be alive as a normal person.
It all depends upon where you lived. The towns were rapidly growing in size and chiller vans weren't a thing so there was the potential that food was past its best by the time it got to market. Plus less had to spread further 🤷 corners were cut and safety wasn't yet paramount.
I deliberately ordered sweetbreads at a French restaurant, and they were delicious. They were the pancreas and thymus...I don't think they are still just any offal.
I bought hard biscuits from an Italian shop 50 years ago while travelling around Europe by train , they were wrapped in a paper bag and did not go soft for the next ten days. I do not think they tasted of much. We dipped the in red wine!
My father used to eat a lot of these foods, like drippings, pigs feet and loved army rations. He also loved the old C rations that you opened with a church key. I developed a fondness for some C rations because we ate those when we travelled. The best was some sort of King Ranch tasting chicken in a can.
The word "potage" means soup in French, to this day. It's not made from any specific ingredients but it's usually vegetable based and might contain meat, but not necessarily. Always eaten piping hot and with loads of delicious buttered bread!
I believe, technically, the Victorian period began in 1837 when Victoria became queen and ended when she died in 1901. Then don't forget Edward VII from 1901-1910. Best do a fact check on that. A bit disappointed that a history show would get that so wrong. Makes me mistrust the accuracy of the other information presented.
Victoria had such a long reign and Edward such a short reign that people forget and take Victorian right up to World War I. It's an understandable mistake I guess as we so often think of World War I as the end point of the that long 19th century Victorian era.
I have a deep partiality towards spam. In 06' in Iraq, through or due to a supply chain order mix up, I received a 40-foot shipping container of spam. And the convoy crew although tired of spam learned to love spam. 😅
I am very sorry to hear that the editor responsible for cutting out smacking, spitting and slurping was unwell and unable to work. Get better soon, buddy!
If you don't like frogs legs then they weren't prepared properly. They have a light delicate chicken taste. They must be skinned and soaked in lightly salted milk overnight. Then wet and dry battered in a light tempura and fried. They should be light and crispy. Very delicious 🎉
I thought that they looked like they still had the skin on. Certainly there was something encasing them. It looks as if quite a few of these foods weren't cooked long enough so that may certainly have added to the problem.
You know how many things were hilariously classified as fish. In the manevil period just so they could be eaten at lent Beaver, this type of water goose,
My mom used to make hard tack for me to go on a long full days horse ride. You take it,break it up and just drop it into broth or stew,or soup and wait for it to soften. It isnt bad really.
Pottage sounds just like Chicken Carcass Glop (tm) that kept us going through Thatcher's Britain in a pokey bedsit in Devon. My mum would save her Sunday chicken carcass & freeze it. We'd take it home & boil the pygostyle off of it in a pressure cooker with an onion and salt & pepper. Strain that stock, add a dash of light soy sauce, sliced button mushrooms, sweetcorn & spring onion & you've got the nicest Chinese chicken soup you've ever tasted. Just right for those willow pattern bowls with china spoons! Anyway, that would've wasted a week's food so that was a special treat. Normally we'd add leeks, onions, root veg ect. to the stock and add all the meat we could find still adhering to the bones. Throw in some barley, lentils ect. Often called "Soup Mix" nowadays, and that makes a great chicken stew. Especially with dumplings if we could afford the suet. Each day we'd add an onion, more pulses, veg... Day two was nearly as good as day one. By day 5 finding a bit of chicken was cause for celebration. It started to become greyer then too. And because of the starch in the pulses & gluten in the dumplings it would set to a firm, grey gel. Seasoning became more and more important especially by Saturday. It was like salty, peppery wallpaper paste by the end of the week. But Sunday arrived and we'd walk the hour's walk to me mum's. Sometimes we'd get to partake of the roast chicken... But mostly not. So we'd reinvented Pottage had we? It definitely keeps you going through a cold winter.
I live in the Southern US, and pickled pig’s feet (trotters) are a thing here. I have never eaten one, never will, but you will see them in big jars all over the South.
Hold on, corn/maize dried out, then cooked in lyme, and cooked into a porridge-like thing? You sure you aren't talking about grits? Also, hominy or corn is dang good with beans, chiles, a lean meat, and squash. Some folks call it three sisters, some call it succotash, but it will keep you full, regular, and healthy at a cheap price while being tasty.
My late Dad once lived in what had been a 14th century brewing shack in Shakespeare country - and yes, he enjoyed real ale. This is such a fab video, thank you. 💖
Wow...I was really cringing at some of those dishes. My grandparents who grew up in the war years in SA loved that dripping on freshly baked bread with apricot jam. They pickled and made canned fruit with anything they could get from a tree or pull out the ground.
Rollmops...yummy. Funny thing is, a lot of herring is fished up here in Britain, but we aren't that keen on it here (more into cod). Most herring is exported to Denmark and Germany.
My late great Aunt cooked a fabulous pigs trotter. It was cooked in a stew with onions and vegetables. I swriously doubt that the trotters would have been served cold, but hot with a slab of bread to mop up the juices.
Yes, maybe if they were cooked in a cuisine where they are traditionally well-liked such as African American, or Chinese, or as another commenter said Eastern European.
When I was a kid I saw a fisherman catch a six-foot conger eel at the local docks. It took three men to haul this writhing monster up the slipway, clear enough of the water that one of them could get in to hit it at the base of the skull and kill it. It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen, a slimy thigh-thick mud-brown body topped off with a large head and a gaping mouth full of evil spiked teeth. I never had much of a liking for the taste of fish anyway, despite growing up on the coast, but that put me off even thinking of ever trying eel one day. I couldn't watch Dan cut a piece of flesh off that conger eel.
I used to like rollmops (pickled herring) as a kid. I liked the sour taste and squeaky rubbery texture, but when I tried them again as an adult I found them disgusting. Maybe it was the brand...? (It wasn't squeaky)
Why does everyone assume that hard tack is eaten as is or just "dipped" in liquid? Surely they would have boiled/rehydrated and cooked the tack in like a stew to make a porridge? It's what sailors do and what east coasters still do in Canada.
Lutfisk (Swedish version of the word) is NOT pickled herring! Lutfisk/ludefisk is dried rehydrated "stockfisk". The sort of fish is similar to cods. Pickled herring is fatty fish marinated raw in a mixture of spices, sugar and a sort of vinegar called ättika often with onion and raw carrot slices. .
I'm Swedish living in Sweden, and really interested in traditional food. The lutfisk is getting more and more rare. People don't like it anymore but I love it! It is bought rehydrated, cooked in the oven and served with boiled potatoes, sort of bechamel sauce and allspice where my family is from. Some eat it with peas and stuff but that is HERACY! :-)
I get the picking at the jellied eel and the sweetbreads but I really don't see why he was so afraid of frog legs. He was nibbling at it like it was poison. Fried frog legs are great. You gotta take a big old bite like eating a chicken wing.
24:42 You should've mentioned nixtamalization. This is a process of soaking maize in an alkaline solution (you mentioned that they used lime water but not why) that changes the maize to increase the bioavailability of certain nutrients. These nutrients, niacin (Vitamin B3) & tryptophan. The body uses tryptophan to help make melatonin and serotonin. Melatonin helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle, and serotonin is thought to help regulate appetite, sleep, mood, and pain. Niacin works in the body as a coenzyme, with more than 400 enzymes dependent on it for various reactions. Niacin helps to convert nutrients into energy, create cholesterol and fats, create and repair DNA, and exert antioxidant effects. When the Conquistadors saw maize being processed in the Aztec Empire they completely ignored nixtamalization. The process wasn't hidden. It wasn't kept from them. In fact, the process probably happened outside the home in full view. So when maize was taken back to Europe this essential step was left behind. And when European settlers went to America they relied upon maize as a staple in their diets but missing this vital step in the processing of maize. The collection of symptoms caused by eating a diet with little meat but rich in non-nixtamalised maize is called Pellagra producing the Pellagran four Ds, diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. This awful disease plagued the Conquistadors, poor Europeans reliant on this new staple and the settlers (and their poor descendants) arriving arriving in America. I've seen a photo of an old lady with Pellagra from Orange County, North Carolina, United States taken in 1939! So because the Spanish thought the Aztecs didn't have anything to teach them in 1492 & onwards they just appropriated maize & ignored nixtamalization even though it was happening right under their racist noses. Millions suffered because of this. Right up to the forties & beyond. What amazes me is that the white, European settlers brought this racism with them to the US. Just a few miles away, over the border in Mexico, the pre-Aztec process of nixtamalisation carried on feeding millions of healthy people whilst the descendants of white, European immigrants were dying by the agonised thousands as they are a staple crop rendered useless by this one omission. No one, and I'm convinced this is a symptom of racism, went to rural Mexico & asked "How is it that the poor of our two countries rely heavily upon maize yet you are healthy & thousands of us are dying agonising deaths for nearly 500 years! Caucasians in the US, I'm sure, didn't think it was worth asking Mexicans anything. Especially if it concerns medicine, chemistry, technology... the sciences. The "These people have nothing to teach us!" was the root cause of the problem half a millennia ago and it's that same thought that kept people from asking their neighbours where they were going wrong. I was just going to write the interesting snippet about nixtamalization & malnourished Conquistadors but in researching to make sure I got the spelling right & that it actually happen I came across that little old lady in North Carolina, USA in 1939 just 1800 miles from Mexico & probably surrounded by farm Mexican labourers who all knew about nixtamalization but the racism was so strong that the information never became widely known enough to stop 500 years of suffering! I'm totally blown away from what I've learned today. And this is just one story from the near infinite list of harms racism causes.
Perhaps it was racism that kept Mexican from sharing the solution when the noticed the health impacts on whitey. You know, a little taste of 'that's what you get'?
"No European, African or Asian had ever tasted a tomato before Christopher Columbus..." So, apparently, Australians have been enjoying tomatoes and chocolate for as long as the Americans!
I used to think that, but they did l eat lying down. There are friezes on walls in Pompeii showing posh banquets where they are all lying around on couches and eating with their fingers.
That was the custom of the higher ranked people in the Roman Empire to eat like that. He would have been treated like a very important person. Lounging to eat showed your status.
I remember an old song I learned in school:
"The biscuits in the army
They say are mighty fine.
One fell off the table
And killed a pal of mine."
Rip my boy Dickus Maximus, he didn't deserve to go out like that man 😢
"I don't want no more of army life, gee ma, I wanna go home."
They say that in the Army
The chicken is might fine.
One jumped off of the table
And started counting time.
Not a real historical song so it doesn’t mean much.
@@blake7587it brought a smile to quite a few people so stop being a sour puss
Why isn't this titled "History Hits Tortures Dan Snow for Likes"?
A thumbnail paints a thousands words...
i don't get it??
Dan has refined tastes. These dishes make him gag.
@@HistoryHit A roman soldier would not lie down and eat, like a roman senator... Get your history straight...!
@@dbfi01 Relax ffs
I heard him say ‘hardtack’ and had a Pavlovian response of hearing *clack clack* straight after.
You watch Tasting History too? :D
Max Miller the legend! Who would have ever thought such a simple bit would grow to this level, lol!
@@Janelane529 one of my favourite channels. Max is the best!
Max!
Me too 😆
Finally a full complete series of Dan eating all of the foods cold
*.
omg!!! This man is so beautiful!!! I want to put my face next to the arch of his foot!!! So, I can sniff and taste them!!!!!
If anyone else on here watches Tasting History, as soon as he said hardtack, did you envision the video clip of Max going *clack, clack*? Lol!
*clack* *clack* XDD
🤣🤣
Max is Waaay better, and his manners are much better. I cringed every time he slapped his chops.. I feel like they have tried to rip him off with this, they even used the same quotes, but they failed miserably.
@@hogwashmcturnip8930 I hadn’t been paying that much attention, but you’re right!
For all the stuff Mr Snow is subjecting himself to, he didn't eat leather on camera (and if you are reading this Dan, DON'T), Max did =x
...although tbh, if I had a choice between jellied eel, and a leather bootstraps.... I fold, I'll have a grilled cheese haha
Love both channels, not taking sides lol I like food and I like history 🤓
I laid on that bed and walked that exact room a few months ago! I travelled from Texas to Butser Farm and got there on a day they closed for staff training! The group were SO NICE! All the staff invited us in to have the whole place to ourselves while they freshened up their knowledge. Regularly checked in on us to make sure our questions were answered and we had a good time! I will never forget that place. Recognized your set immediately
This was a great documentary. I love that he is actually tasting the food vs just talking about it
Yes, I just wish he wasn't talking with his mouthful lol. Ugh.
In Germany during WW II cigarettes again became the main currency on the black market. Almost everybody started smoking, sometimes even children. Because nicotin would calm your shattered nerves after an air raid and even dull the feeling of constant hunger. That was certainly unhealthy, but at a time when you felt you could die any minute, a longterm healthy lifestyle seemed less urgent.
Don't forget brandy, chocolate bars and toilet tissue. We Americans found out about that last one in 2020.
A lot of these dishes look as if they would have tasted much better when prepared well
I kept thinking the same thing. I don't know why the upper class food was so poorly prepared. I get that if you're juggling all the work of running a household and possibly having some craft to bring in income that cooking would be just a get it done thing, but if cooking is your whole job . . .
Yeah you have to correct for modern brits cooking this... who else would serve bean stew cold?
I read that hard tack or biscuits weren't meant to be eaten without soaking them first. My hats off to you for surviving all of these meals.
Agreed.
There's a dish in Newfoundland (pronounced as Neu - FAEN - land, the 1st "d" is silent whereas the 2nd "d" is pronounced) that uses hard tack called Fish & Brewis (pronounced as Bruse), it's either soaked or boiled with potatoes & veggies or boiled then fried. Each Newfie family has their own recipe for using hard tack.
Yup. You break em up like crackers and pour soup over them. Or stew. When they sodften they're fine. I used to love them as a kid. My mom made them for when I went out riding my horse.
Where did you read that? Please share your source for our curiosity and further learning
I'll have to look through my civil war books to find which one. Hopefully I can find the book in a couple of days. I'll get back to you.
I think there's one aspect missing here. Dan Snow is not starving. He does not exert himself from sun up to sun down with hard manual labour. He does not walk miles back and forth every day. For those soldiers in the trenches, for the poor in Victorian UK , the food they ate everyday that tastes terrible to us today would be normal and heartening to them. They would be grateful and thankful that they had those to eat when faced with starvation.
Yup, it's not a reality show. It's a historian tasting food from history. The context is implied.
Also a lot of these dishes weren't shown at their best, pottage as I understand it was not preferred cold, it was almost always eaten hot like a modern soup, and it almost always included local herbs and whatever flavorings were available. Depending on the time and place it would have most often and wherever possible contained salt or something that had been preserved in salt too. The posca had way too much vinegar in it if it was astringent, it was basically the ancient version of a cordial, a flavouring to make the water taste better, the vinegar should only be enough to make it a bit sour, no where near enough to make your throat sting. Pickled herring is gross though.
The Victorians certainly complained about the terrible adulteration of their bread and indeed laws were passed to correct the awful quality of bread and the terrible working conditions of British urban bakers. He doesn't do justice to a lot of the food here but Victorian urban bread was notoriously terrible in quality. American writers like Jack London comment on it when visiting London.
@@violetskies14he even said that the pottage was heated, even stewed over a fire for days as new ingredients were added (to replace what had been eaten) - and then ate it cold🤦
His trotters probably weren't cooked well enough either.
When you're brought up to eat certain foods, they become a staple or even a delicacy. I was brought up eating offal (ox, maybe sheep, not pig mind 🤢 pig flavour is too strong) and rabbit (more like chicken than chicken) and love both. And most of what we ate were cheap cuts so now I have no particular desire to feast on expensive cuts (although I will try them before discounting them entirely and have never, absolutely not ever, been able to overcome a distaste for tripe - nope definitely not going there!). I really miss mutton.
Spam is not meant to be eaten cold. Some people actually like it , but only when fried to render some of the fat.
Dip it in batter and you can have a “Spam fritter”.
Exactly! People back then weren't stupid! They would have cut slices and fried it. No different than bacon! Salty and good! Honestly same for the sheep feet, there are better ways to prepare these items. Then again we are talking Britain so maybe this was as good as it got. 😅
Not sure I can trust his tastes after seeing his reaction to spam. I slice and cook it in a pan but have eaten it cold on occasion. It’s still good. Tastes like a cold pork paté.
It isn't? I have it cold all the time haha! Just use it as a meat filling for a sandwich, perfect!
Cold spam sandwiches are amazing!
Pig trotters are actually a part of traditional dish among Eastern Europeans. It is cooked for long hours, better overnight, then cleaned from skin and bones, and the broth was divided on small portions and cooled in wells or basements where the T was never higher than 6-8C. The broth which is the collagen extract turns into jello, and was eaten with garlic or horseradish. People who had meat, added meat on the bottom on the jello form, also pepper or other spices, so they could get much more delicious jello, and it looked nice too. From biochemical point of view this dish is very fulfilling and healthy, because it’s a pure collagen, very well extracted from joints. Humans digest it easily, and it goes directly to build our skin and joints. BTW biochemically pigs are very close to humans, we even can use pigs’ organs as transplants. My friend who was a vegetarian for over 2 decades suffered from terrible joints pain, had to use a cane to walk. I recommended her to stop idiotic diet and eat collagen foods at least for 2 weeks… she refused, but after the pain became severe so she barely was able to walk, she did similar dish as I described earlier but used chicken feet, not pig’s. How long it took her to be able to walk as normal human, what do you think? 3 weeks. After that she decided to eat chicken ones a week.
Bulgarian here, I totally get the picture and it's delicious! Crushed garlic with wine vinegar for maximum enjoyment.
My mother was from Germany, born in 1931. She used to make the best pigs feet. She made it flavored with a bit of bay leaf, caraway and a splash of vinegar. Delicious with spicy mustard and some rye bread. Also used to scrape the fat off and spread it on bread with a shake of salt.
My grandma used to make me pig feet. I only ate her pig feet cooking. Loved that down south from the rooter to the tooter cooking/eating mentality.
Are you making an argument for cannabilism? 😂😂
There's a south asian dish that's extremely similar in concept, and mostly made by Muslims so it uses goat or bovine trotters instead of pig's feet. It's called Paya soup, and it's one hell of a hearty meal. I'd add that being south asia, spices are way cheaper and so its quite liberally seasoned.
It's especially popular as a dish made by bakers for themselves and their labour, and rarely if ever, sold to outsiders.
Bakers in these parts often work through the night, and when the rest of the city would wake for breakfast and demand fresh bread, they'd be exhausted and ending their workday. That soup and bread is one of those meals that hits you in the soul. If the baker shared his meal with you, it would be like him calling you family.
The nutrition is also brilliant, especially if you're convalescent.
Chocolate with chili is brilliant, and yes it does cure everything, as far as I’m concerned😂
It's incredibly high in antioxidants! Maybe not a cure for everything, but certainly very good for you...as long as you go easy on the sugar.
Chocolate and chili really will make you feel better, as chocolate contains psychoactive theobromine that makes you feel nice and capsaicin activates temperature regulating nerve cells in your gut, making you warmer as your metabolism speeds up a bit.
01:08:40 Ohhh the disrespect shown to SPAM😆You never eat it cold Dan, thats disgusting🤣You fry it up in thin slices and eat it with eggs or as a sandwich. Scramble some eggs, dice some SPAM up, add rice and seasoning, fry it all up together...delish!
I agree with you. I was raised on fried spam and eggs. Hawaiians love it too. I was surprised to find Spam sushi there. It wasn't bad..
Wonderful spam! oh wonderful spam
I love spam, even cold tbf
when I was at college in the late 1970s, Friday night was spam fritters. Loved them! Im vegetarian now.
Pickled pig's feet! I was raised on those. My Nannie was raised in the South and used to make this. It really was delicious.
my Gran would boil trotters until they fell apart then make a delicious soup or sometimes stew
My grandmother would fry Spam, and we would make sandwiches. They were delicious! I’m sure you know how much Spam is loved in Hawaii! Great video! I’m sending it to my sister the chef! 😊
I lived in Hawaii for several years and used to go to Zippy's to eat noodles with eggs and spam in it! I also had breakfast there too and it had Spam with scrambled eggs too. Awesome!
Spam fried rice was one of the first dish I learned to cook at age 11.
My mom made fried spam, I always liked it.
You have dripping completely wrong! It is the fat that is in the baking tin after a large piece of meat is roasted so it contains the flavor of the meat plus any spices or herbs rubbed into meat before cooking. Yes there was a layer of fat on top but I grew up in postwar Britain and we loved dripping spread on bread. Your father was right!
I grew up with what my mum called yorkshire pudding- pour flour/eggs/ milk mixture into the fat drippings in the tin from roasting the meat and bake- the best stuff ever! Still my favorite today. I've delighted many an American pallet with it. I grew up in America and have never understood why no Americans ever heard of this dish. I always assumed my mother brought it over from Britain. It was considered a delicacy served on holidays in our house when we would eat roast beef. The rest of the time we ate fish and spam. Though I do still love spam salads.
@ogg5949 Yorkshire pudding it's my favourite part of a Sunday roast, simple but delicious..
He only had the white fat and not the tasty brown jelly that normally goes with it.
@@Iaintwoke I also suspect that was not proper dripping but lard, not the same thing at all.
Moreover, you can use it to make the most delicious pastry.
They make sweet breads in Argentina and it’s delicious. They make him in the grill until crispy and put lime on it. I have gotten a lot of American friends into it. It’s pretty good.
Maize alkalized in lime is called hominy. It's hominy.
Hominy grits. Yummy 😋🤤
Dan Snow is such a Legend. Great work, Sir!
I bet the tribes were laughing: "this Emperor wants *parsnips* instead of gold, we're rich!!"
Parsnips are great though. Fry it or saute it and it's delicious, salty and sweet.
Spam is so much more edible when sliced and cooked and served hot.
I was born end of the 60s. Our parents were WW2 kids (1 early teen, 1 small child). Products of the "Protestant work ethic", they ate what they were given and expected us to do the same. We had bread and dripping often (the Monday remnant of the small Sunday roast)... it was delicious! The way it is "served" with no effort in this programme is ridiculous drama. In reality: Toasted chunky brown bread, re-melted beef dripping, white pepper, salt.... and in the summer a tomato (home grown and ripened in the airing cupboard) and small chunk of cheese on the side. Simple and lovely!
You have brought back happy memories to me. I used to love bread and dripping and my favourite was pork dripping. Also bread fried in dripping, that was delicious. A favourite supper was a thick slice of fried drippjng bread, with fried tomatoes on it and an egg on the top. My mother always roasted a couple of onions with the pork, so the gravy and dripping had an onion taste too. I know a lot of people will cry that it was unhealthy, but I'm 72 and still here! My parents and grandparents lived into their 80s.
Damn so different to Native Americans, real Americans grow up eating tacos, tostadas, chili and tomato salsas, potatoes, and tons of slow cooked meats.
Nothing better than a home grown tomato. So delicious. And that bread dripping...YUMM!
I really enjoyed this ! Found if fascinating and enjoyed the light humour , really good ! Thanks Dan for your sacrifice!
Did the person cooking the sheep and pig feet do it without any herbs or spices in the broth? And perhaps didn't cook long enough? These items should fall apart readily after cooking and having a strong flavor from the cooking liquid helps make the texture more palatable.
My dad used to love his bread and dripping, though my mum couldn't stand it. It brought her too many bad memories of childhood, incorporating aircraft falling out of the skies and respectful funerals for foreign and/or enemy pilots whose families would likely never get to visit the graves.
Three decades after the war we used to eat spam sandwiches, with the block of spam cut into thin slices like luncheon meat and covered with pickles. I've never eaten it like that since I left home, but I do love spam grilled or fried and eaten as part of a full English or in a bap with a shit-ton (technical term) of brown sauce.
Why would respectful funerals for foreign enemy pilots cause your mum to not want to eat dripping? That is most bizarre comment I’ve ever read 🙈😂
As a nipper in the 1960s my mum would take me to visit the grandparents at the weekend. My nan would give me dripping on toast. A big fat 'doorstop' piece of toast, proper butter and dripping. Along with some tea from the teapot, loose tea stewed to the max. I loved it. Dan here is having dripping on bread cold which I imagine wouldn't taste as good as it is warm/hot.
@@Devils-advocate78 Enjoying or disliking the taste of certain foods is highly influenced by the mental state you were in when eating them before. Similar to enjoying the smells of something like a freshly mown meadow because it unconsciously reminds you of that great vacation you had in your childhood. Taste and smell can bring you back to good times and bad times, causing you to dislike or like them. For instance, i only need to put a King mint in my mouth for relaxation as it brings me back to my childhood days going on walks or bike rides with my grandfather (he always had a roll of those mints in his pockets). On the other hand, I hate the taste of McDonald’s as that was I was eating when my first long time girlfriend dumped me (and probably because it’s crap anyway).
Spam is nasty. But if that's all you had be surprised what you would eat.
I imagine a lot of these would be a lot more palatable if they were actually warm (and been prepared properly). I can't imagine the potage would have been served cold and herbless back in the day.
It would be interesting to see if Dan's opinions would change if he revisted these foods with some "historical hunger" such as after fasting for a few days.
I mean.. anything is good if you're starving. Not much of an evaluation in that case.
It appears you've never experienced true hunger if you describe fasting for a few days as "starving"
@@darinwink-ou4qk It's a colloquialism, smartass.
It wasn't that common for people to be starving. You talk as though it was the norm, which it certainly was not. The average field working peasant ate between 7,000-9,000 calories a day to get through 12-14 hour working days
@@jjboswell5043 My point was it didn't seem to add much educational value to watch Dan Snow try historical food and then tell us it tasted disgusting. It appeared that he needed some extra motivation to speak about these dishes in historical context. Much as you say people weren't starving; they also weren't including in their diets staple dishes that they thought tasted terrible..
You know, I have never ever once considered WHY there's pineapples everywhere on old timey stuff. Now I know. Also, I LOVE Spam but the thought of eating it cold from the can makes me feel ill haha
You should link up Tasting History by Max Miller. There could be awesome collaboration videos!
That would be Max Slumming it. Plus doesn´t make have a thing about bad eaters?
Yeah, but Max Miller does actual research, prepares the meals correctly and tries them fresh, and with an open mind,
I just linked it! He uses Apicius' cookery book, too. I'd be surprised if Dan was not familiar.
And sweetbreads is not ovaries in testicles, it is the thymus gland of the throat, and the pancreas.
I'm glad at least one other person knows that.
They are also meant to be grilled so the outside is crisp and caramelized. The ones he tasted appeared to have been boiled.🤢 It's unfortunate that whoever cooked them knew less about preparing them than they did about what they even were. I can only hope that they at least knew enough to clean and dress them correctly. I somehow doubt it, though
Sweet meats and sweet breads are different. Sweet meats are the testes etc
'ovaries in testicles'? surely an impossibility!
@@helenswan705 LOL! I didn't notice that typo before. I use "dictate" a lot.
Believe or not, spam is extremely popular in Hawaii due to their experience with it in WW2. You can still get spam, egg, and cheese sandwiches for breakfast there.
We still like Spam in the UK too
Musubis are one of the best foods, period.
Not just because of WWII. I'm Kānaka maoli, Polynesians already had a very pork centric cuisine and culture. We brought pig and chicken with us across the Pacific. Add that WWII and today's relative poverty of most Native Hawaiians (and local immigrants and other Polynesians) resulting in Spam being popular across the Pacific (Hawai'i, Samoa, Guam, Tonga, Marshall Islands, etc.)
Spam is ono grinds too which helps!
Pottage looks nice. Basically just a vegetable stew. I make a similar type of soup all of the time. Needs salt and herbs to make it tasty though.
I absolutely adore food history. Annie Gray is always one of my favorite guests on all history podcasts! Anything social history from shampooing your hair and keeping clean to what people eat is just right up my alley. Thank you so much for this video! It was also pretty hilarious 😅
Add Tasting History by Max Miller too.
I love how they included the stuff miserable soldiers and intentionally abstaining monks would eat and it was still better than the diet of the average person in victorian England. I swear, the more I learn about the period, the more it seems like the single worst time to be alive as a normal person.
It all depends upon where you lived. The towns were rapidly growing in size and chiller vans weren't a thing so there was the potential that food was past its best by the time it got to market. Plus less had to spread further 🤷 corners were cut and safety wasn't yet paramount.
Monks were excellent at making dishes because they had to make quality because they worked for God
I deliberately ordered sweetbreads at a French restaurant, and they were delicious. They were the pancreas and thymus...I don't think they are still just any offal.
I wish we had more documentaries with Dan Snow. He's super nice!
I bought hard biscuits from an Italian shop 50 years ago while travelling around Europe by train , they were wrapped in a paper bag and did not go soft for the next ten days. I do not think they tasted of much. We dipped the in red wine!
You dont sip them. Just break them up and pour soup or s tew over t hem and wait till they softed. Usually a few minutes.
My father used to eat a lot of these foods, like drippings, pigs feet and loved army rations. He also loved the old C rations that you opened with a church key. I developed a fondness for some C rations because we ate those when we travelled. The best was some sort of King Ranch tasting chicken in a can.
The word "potage" means soup in French, to this day. It's not made from any specific ingredients but it's usually vegetable based and might contain meat, but not necessarily. Always eaten piping hot and with loads of delicious buttered bread!
In Ireland pottage was called stirabout because you put things in the pot and stirred it about
Ha same in the north of the Netherlands roerom same meaning.
aha, a technical term.
Dan Snow isn’t really a “historian” or an “expert” he’s a TV personality.
20:20 the way he is holding that tortilla is almost infuriating
Got to you too, did it 🙄
I believe, technically, the Victorian period began in 1837 when Victoria became queen and ended when she died in 1901. Then don't forget Edward VII from 1901-1910. Best do a fact check on that. A bit disappointed that a history show would get that so wrong. Makes me mistrust the accuracy of the other information presented.
Victoria had such a long reign and Edward such a short reign that people forget and take Victorian right up to World War I. It's an understandable mistake I guess as we so often think of World War I as the end point of the that long 19th century Victorian era.
seems obvious!
I have a deep partiality towards spam. In 06' in Iraq, through or due to a supply chain order mix up, I received a 40-foot shipping container of spam. And the convoy crew although tired of spam learned to love spam. 😅
I am very sorry to hear that the editor responsible for cutting out smacking, spitting and slurping was unwell and unable to work. Get better soon, buddy!
Revolting isn´t it. I have always had a thing about eating and I would have to leave if I was at table with him!
i love to hear dan slurping 😈
Why would anyone edit out the etiquette? Noisy eating is good manners in a number of cultures.
@@christopherjahn2044 You have the same humour as me, love it ;-)
I like this version of Dan Snow. Great sense of humor
I came here from Max Miller’s Tasting History. I’m conditioned to expect a British accent from Roman characters, so this was excellent.
The French Army still gets wine in their rations, one carton of Red and one of White.
And Spam is very popular in South Korea.
One of my ancestors served in the Roman army, his name was Biggus Dickus and according to my grandfather he never complained about food.
Oooooh, shades of Monty Python!😊🎉
Dan wasn't listening when his mom said "Never talk with your mouth full Danny!"
His eating was heard to watch. She clearly never told him not to `slap his gills either
😂
Not to mention, “Use your napkins, darling…”
This was very good. I thank you for your personal tortures
But Mum, I'm doing a documentary on food! 😂
If you don't like frogs legs then they weren't prepared properly. They have a light delicate chicken taste. They must be skinned and soaked in lightly salted milk overnight. Then wet and dry battered in a light tempura and fried. They should be light and crispy. Very delicious 🎉
I thought that they looked like they still had the skin on. Certainly there was something encasing them. It looks as if quite a few of these foods weren't cooked long enough so that may certainly have added to the problem.
The way he’s holding it, looks like he’s never eaten anything on a tortilla in his life 😅 🌮
You know how many things were hilariously classified as fish. In the manevil period just so they could be eaten at lent
Beaver, this type of water goose,
I still practice fasting like the medieval period. It has helped my health a lot!!! I also have lost 10lbs
I once tried cajun-blackened spam. I spent half the night afraid I'd die and the other half afraid I wouldn't.
😂
My mom used to make hard tack for me to go on a long full days horse ride. You take it,break it up and just drop it into broth or stew,or soup and wait for it to soften. It isnt bad really.
Or you put it under the saddle and let the horse's sweat soften it.
@@RichWoods23 Umm,..I think I'll pass on that one. LOL Didnt the Indians do that and the Mongols?
Mongols used to do it to cook their meat on long journeys, though as far as I'm aware it was wrapped and wasn't directly touching the horse's skin
Aztec menu looks good and healthy.
What will future generations say about the poison we consume nowadays.
@@wowplayer160 that its poison
@@ralph0149 😮 yuk
@@ralph0149 lol 🤣😆😆
Parts of it do.
Sweet potatoes are from a different plant family from potatoes.
Indeed, he is no botanist.
Pottage sounds just like Chicken Carcass Glop (tm) that kept us going through Thatcher's Britain in a pokey bedsit in Devon.
My mum would save her Sunday chicken carcass & freeze it. We'd take it home & boil the pygostyle off of it in a pressure cooker with an onion and salt & pepper.
Strain that stock, add a dash of light soy sauce, sliced button mushrooms, sweetcorn & spring onion & you've got the nicest Chinese chicken soup you've ever tasted. Just right for those willow pattern bowls with china spoons!
Anyway, that would've wasted a week's food so that was a special treat.
Normally we'd add leeks, onions, root veg ect. to the stock and add all the meat we could find still adhering to the bones.
Throw in some barley, lentils ect. Often called "Soup Mix" nowadays, and that makes a great chicken stew. Especially with dumplings if we could afford the suet.
Each day we'd add an onion, more pulses, veg... Day two was nearly as good as day one.
By day 5 finding a bit of chicken was cause for celebration. It started to become greyer then too. And because of the starch in the pulses & gluten in the dumplings it would set to a firm, grey gel. Seasoning became more and more important especially by Saturday. It was like salty, peppery wallpaper paste by the end of the week.
But Sunday arrived and we'd walk the hour's walk to me mum's. Sometimes we'd get to partake of the roast chicken... But mostly not.
So we'd reinvented Pottage had we? It definitely keeps you going through a cold winter.
LOVED Dan Snow before this video and I love him even more now that he’s put himself through all of this for our knowledge and entertainment! 😂
My dad loved pickled pigs, feet but a jellied German styled with pickle spices
Maybe at the front you might eat Spam straight out of the can, otherwise you'd fry it up like ham or bacon.
Dan Snow has never heard of a cooker, a frying pan or a pot. HEAT THE FOOD FIRST MAN.
Gerard was his last name. John was his first. He was John Gerard, and he wrote a herbal, a book of herbs called "Gerarde's Herball".
Thank you!
Watching your videos is so much fun! I LOVE SPAM!
It blows my mind that people today still eat Spam outta the can instead of frying it.
I live in the Southern US, and pickled pig’s feet (trotters) are a thing here. I have never eaten one, never will, but you will see them in big jars all over the South.
May I suggest frying Spam. It's way better than just canned
Hold on, corn/maize dried out, then cooked in lyme, and cooked into a porridge-like thing? You sure you aren't talking about grits?
Also, hominy or corn is dang good with beans, chiles, a lean meat, and squash. Some folks call it three sisters, some call it succotash, but it will keep you full, regular, and healthy at a cheap price while being tasty.
My late Dad once lived in what had been a 14th century brewing shack in Shakespeare country - and yes, he enjoyed real ale. This is such a fab video, thank you. 💖
The song playing in the world war 2 rations is from Giuseppe Vasapolli. He does the music for Hollywood graveyards.
The way you ate that frog leg told me all I needed to know 😂😂😂
Wow...I was really cringing at some of those dishes. My grandparents who grew up in the war years in SA loved that dripping on freshly baked bread with apricot jam. They pickled and made canned fruit with anything they could get from a tree or pull out the ground.
Oh my, Dan. Ty for posting :)
Pickled herring is wonderful. I would eat it daily if I could.
Rollmops...yummy. Funny thing is, a lot of herring is fished up here in Britain, but we aren't that keen on it here (more into cod). Most herring is exported to Denmark and Germany.
Zure haring op een wit bolletje en wat uitjes 😋
@@jamesg9468 I’m living in the US, but originally from Sweden. I cannot get good and affordable pickled herring here.
@@sweinnc Maybe a business idea. Drive throw herring fast food shop.
have you gone mad
My college was next to the Huntley and Palmer's building in Reading, I walked past it every day until I was 19
My late great Aunt cooked a fabulous pigs trotter. It was cooked in a stew with onions and vegetables. I swriously doubt that the trotters would have been served cold, but hot with a slab of bread to mop up the juices.
Yes, maybe if they were cooked in a cuisine where they are traditionally well-liked such as African American, or Chinese, or as another commenter said Eastern European.
Maybe he would like them better then
And they would have been cooked a lot longer than those look to have been.
When I was a kid I saw a fisherman catch a six-foot conger eel at the local docks. It took three men to haul this writhing monster up the slipway, clear enough of the water that one of them could get in to hit it at the base of the skull and kill it. It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen, a slimy thigh-thick mud-brown body topped off with a large head and a gaping mouth full of evil spiked teeth. I never had much of a liking for the taste of fish anyway, despite growing up on the coast, but that put me off even thinking of ever trying eel one day. I couldn't watch Dan cut a piece of flesh off that conger eel.
Oh, FFS, you had to do jellied eels as well, didn't you? I left the room.
I used to like rollmops (pickled herring) as a kid. I liked the sour taste and squeaky rubbery texture, but when I tried them again as an adult I found them disgusting. Maybe it was the brand...? (It wasn't squeaky)
Fantastic show!
Why does everyone assume that hard tack is eaten as is or just "dipped" in liquid? Surely they would have boiled/rehydrated and cooked the tack in like a stew to make a porridge? It's what sailors do and what east coasters still do in Canada.
All that Dan lacked with that pickled herring, aka lutefisk, was a large fire with a group singing Icelandic folk songs. 😊
Lutfisk (Swedish version of the word) is NOT pickled herring! Lutfisk/ludefisk is dried rehydrated "stockfisk". The sort of fish is similar to cods. Pickled herring is fatty fish marinated raw in a mixture of spices, sugar and a sort of vinegar called ättika often with onion and raw carrot slices. .
@@slottsdraken thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression that it was herring.
I'm Swedish living in Sweden, and really interested in traditional food. The lutfisk is getting more and more rare. People don't like it anymore but I love it! It is bought rehydrated, cooked in the oven and served with boiled potatoes, sort of bechamel sauce and allspice where my family is from. Some eat it with peas and stuff but that is HERACY! :-)
My family is of southern Italian descent and we sometimes eat laying down.
I get the picking at the jellied eel and the sweetbreads but I really don't see why he was so afraid of frog legs. He was nibbling at it like it was poison. Fried frog legs are great. You gotta take a big old bite like eating a chicken wing.
24:42 You should've mentioned nixtamalization. This is a process of soaking maize in an alkaline solution (you mentioned that they used lime water but not why) that changes the maize to increase the bioavailability of certain nutrients.
These nutrients, niacin (Vitamin B3) & tryptophan. The body uses tryptophan to help make melatonin and serotonin. Melatonin helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle, and serotonin is thought to help regulate appetite, sleep, mood, and pain.
Niacin works in the body as a coenzyme, with more than 400 enzymes dependent on it for various reactions. Niacin helps to convert nutrients into energy, create cholesterol and fats, create and repair DNA, and exert antioxidant effects.
When the Conquistadors saw maize being processed in the Aztec Empire they completely ignored nixtamalization. The process wasn't hidden. It wasn't kept from them. In fact, the process probably happened outside the home in full view.
So when maize was taken back to Europe this essential step was left behind. And when European settlers went to America they relied upon maize as a staple in their diets but missing this vital step in the processing of maize.
The collection of symptoms caused by eating a diet with little meat but rich in non-nixtamalised maize is called Pellagra producing the Pellagran four Ds, diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. This awful disease plagued the Conquistadors, poor Europeans reliant on this new staple and the settlers (and their poor descendants) arriving arriving in America. I've seen a photo of an old lady with Pellagra from Orange County, North Carolina, United States taken in 1939!
So because the Spanish thought the Aztecs didn't have anything to teach them in 1492 & onwards they just appropriated maize & ignored nixtamalization even though it was happening right under their racist noses. Millions suffered because of this. Right up to the forties & beyond.
What amazes me is that the white, European settlers brought this racism with them to the US. Just a few miles away, over the border in Mexico, the pre-Aztec process of nixtamalisation carried on feeding millions of healthy people whilst the descendants of white, European immigrants were dying by the agonised thousands as they are a staple crop rendered useless by this one omission.
No one, and I'm convinced this is a symptom of racism, went to rural Mexico & asked "How is it that the poor of our two countries rely heavily upon maize yet you are healthy & thousands of us are dying agonising deaths for nearly 500 years!
Caucasians in the US, I'm sure, didn't think it was worth asking Mexicans anything. Especially if it concerns medicine, chemistry, technology... the sciences.
The "These people have nothing to teach us!" was the root cause of the problem half a millennia ago and it's that same thought that kept people from asking their neighbours where they were going wrong.
I was just going to write the interesting snippet about nixtamalization & malnourished Conquistadors but in researching to make sure I got the spelling right & that it actually happen I came across that little old lady in North Carolina, USA in 1939 just 1800 miles from Mexico & probably surrounded by farm Mexican labourers who all knew about nixtamalization but the racism was so strong that the information never became widely known enough to stop 500 years of suffering!
I'm totally blown away from what I've learned today.
And this is just one story from the near infinite list of harms racism causes.
Best comment. Very informative. Thank you.
@@SusanForeman1963 A pleasure mate. It seemed like a huge omission.
Perhaps it was racism that kept Mexican from sharing the solution when the noticed the health impacts on whitey. You know, a little taste of 'that's what you get'?
most informative thank so much
@@helenswan705 Thank you 😃
That was great!
"No European, African or Asian had ever tasted a tomato before Christopher Columbus..." So, apparently, Australians have been enjoying tomatoes and chocolate for as long as the Americans!
😂
Trotters were pickled or smoked; today I have smoked ham hock, without the cloven hoof party. Good with sauerkraut and boild potatoes.
There are Many ways of doing totters. Not only smoked. They are still a common dish in Spain. I make them myself to a Spanish recipe.
The drum tattoo under the pigs’ trotters is hilarious!
Maize gruel=grits
I even like hominy
"Maize porridge" is made of ground hominy and it's called grits in the Southern United States
Not gonna lie, Henry sending her the buck killed by his own hand is kinda romantic and sexy haha
I 100% doubt a high-ranked Roman officer would've eaten in such an awkward position.
I used to think that, but they did l eat lying down. There are friezes on walls in Pompeii showing posh banquets where they are all lying around on couches and eating with their fingers.
That was the custom of the higher ranked people in the Roman Empire to eat like that. He would have been treated like a very important person. Lounging to eat showed your status.
I absolutely loved this, thank you.
Spam is heavily favoured in many asian countries. They fry it and glaze it with sweet marinade. With good cooking it does seem pretty good actually.
Came for the cheese, stayed for the history.....
This is so awesome!!!
I would like to like that vid 5x over, just for his bravery.