Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Jun 25, 2024Black mead, or bochet, made with spices and wood chips
City/Region: Paris
Time Period: 1393Mead was very popular from Russia to England, but started to lose favor in part due to the rise of cheaper brews like vodka and hopped ales. Mead was often still drunk for its medicinal properties, especially when it was infused with herbs and spices.
This mead has some of those wonderfully warming spices, and I added wood chips from the local brewing store to mimic the wood barrels that it would have been fermented in. The burnt caramel scent softens and mellows out during fermentation, and the resulting mead is not sweet at all and is more complex than many meads I’ve had.
To make six sextier of bochet, take six pints of very sweet honey, and put it in a cauldron on the fire and boil it, and stir for so long that it starts to grow, and you see that it also boils with bubbles like small blisters which will burst, releasing a little bit of dark smoke. Then add seven sextier of water and boil so much that it reduces to six sextiers, and keep stirring. And then put it in a vat to cool until it is lukewarm; then strain it through a cloth, and put it in a barrel and add a pint of yeast from ale, because that is what makes it piquant, (though if you use bread yeast, it makes as good a flavor, but the color will be duller), and cover well and warmly so it ferments.
If you want to make it very good, add an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grains of paradise and cloves in equal amounts, except for the cloves of which there should be the least, and put them in a cloth bag and toss it in. And when it has been two or three days and the bochet smells of spices and is strong enough, take out the bag and wring it out and put it in the next barrel that you make. And so this powder will serve you well up to three or four times.
— Le Ménagier de Paris, 1393.
October 8, 2024
Making the Black Mead of Medieval France – Bochet
October 2, 2024
How Gold Rush Miners Ate in the Wild West
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Jun 18, 2024Biscuits topped with salt pork milk gravy
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1881Food prices skyrocketed during the Gold Rush. A single egg could cost $1 (in the mid-1800s!), and a barrel of flour went from $3 to a whopping $400, which equals about $16,000 today. Once you had some flour and a few other staples, including the newly invented canned evaporated milk, you could make these biscuits and gravy.
I love biscuits and gravy, and while the best biscuits and gravy I’ve ever had will always be my grandpa’s, this is pretty good. My biscuits turned out a little flat, but that’s just because I forgot the baking soda.
Cream of Tartar Biscuits
Mrs. Milliken
One quart of flour, three heaping teaspoonfuls of pure cream of tartar, a piece of butter two-thirds the size of an egg, well worked in flour, one heaping teaspoonful of Babbit’s salaratus, dissolved in sweet milk. Make the dough as soft as can be kneaded conveniently; roll a half inch thick, cut in biscuits, and bake in a quick oven.
— Los Angeles Cookery, 1881
September 23, 2024
What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons?
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Jun 11, 2024Baked beans made with molasses and salt pork
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1886One of the definitions for a saloon is a place that serves food and drink, but makes most of its money from drink. This certainly was the case in the Old West, where a lot of saloons served a free lunch as long as you bought a drink. Just because it was free, didn’t mean it was low quality food. In fact, many saloons, especially those in larger cities with more competition, served fancier and fancier meals to draw in patrons.
These beans aren’t the French cuisine that some saloons served, but they are delicious. Even without the onions and spices that some recipes used, they’re so flavorful and much better than canned versions.
Baked Pork and Beans
Wash and pick over a large heaping cupful of navy beans and steep them in water over night. Put them on next morning with fresh water to more than cover, and baking soda the size of a bean and let boil about an hour. Then carry them to the sink, pour all into a colander letting the water run away and put back into the saucepan with cold water enough to come up to a level. Boil again and in a few minutes they will be soft. Season with a little salt and tablespoon of molasses. Put them into four pint bowls or tin pans, lay an ounce slice of salt pork on each and bake half an hour.
— Cooking for Profit by Jessup Whitehead, 1886
September 4, 2024
The History of Barbecue
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published May 28, 2024Slow-cooked molasses barbecued pork with a vinegary sauce
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1839 | 1879“Barbecue” the cooking technique has been around for a lot longer than “barbecue” the word, but it has always been a delicious way to prepare meat. This is the earliest recipe I could find for something called barbecue, and I paired it with a sauce from 40 years later that seems to me to be a precursor to vinegar-based Carolina style barbecue sauces.
The meat is super tender and falls apart. I ended up needing to cook mine for about 12 hours, but it was worth it. You really don’t need anything besides a bit of salt to go with it, but the sauce is a delicious pairing. It packs a spicy, flavorful punch, but it’s surprisingly not too vinegary.
To Barbecue Shoat.
Take either a hind or fore quarter, rub it well with salt, pepper, and a small portion of molasses, and if practicable, let it lie for a few hours; then rinse it clean, and wipe it dry with a cloth, and place it on a large gridiron, over a bed of clear coals. Do not barbecue it hastily, but let it cool slowly for several hours, turning it over occasionally, and basting it with nothing but a little salt-water and pepper, merely to season and moisten it a little. When it is well done, serve it without a garnish …”
— The Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Bryan, 1839.As the housekeeper is sometimes hurried in preparing a dish, it will save time and trouble for her to keep on hand a bottle of meat-flavoring compounded of the following ingredients.
2 chopped onions. 3 pods of red pepper (chopped). 2 tablespoonfuls brown sugar. 1 tablespoonful celery seed. 1 tablespoonful ground mustard. 1 teaspoonful turmeric. 1 teaspoonful black pepper. 1 teaspoonful salt. Put it all in a quart bottle and fill it up with cider vinegar.
— Housekeeping in Old Virginia edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, 1879.
August 24, 2024
Eating on a German U-Boat in WW1
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published May 7, 2024Sauerkraut soup served with German black bread, or schwarzbrot
City/Region: Germany
Time Period: 1915The food aboard a German U-boat could get really monotonous, especially after the first ten days or so, when all of the best and freshest ingredients would have gone bad. This simple soup uses ingredients that would have been available on board, and comes from a German cookbook from WWI. There are actually several variations of this soup in the cookbook, the only difference being swapping out the sauerkraut for other ingredients like pickles, cabbage, or beets.
You need to like sauerkraut in order to enjoy this soup, as there isn’t anything else going on to contribute other flavors. I highly recommend eating it with some schwarzbrot, or black bread. It balances the sourness of the soup and the two go together very nicely.
Sauerkrautsuppe
The fat and flour are whisked and the water is slowly added. When the soup has simmered, the sauerkraut is added. Salt and vinegar are added to the soup and seasoned.
— Kriegskochbuch, 1915.
August 16, 2024
Dining on the luxury liner RMS Lusitania
Rich, creamy banana ice cream with banana compote
City/Region: England
Time Period: 1894Today, the Lusitania is most remembered for being the target of a German torpedo on May 7, 1915, but when she sailed, she was known for being the height of speed and luxury. This ice cream dessert was served to second class passengers on October 9, 1913 on board the Lusitania, and the same dessert is on a menu from April 11, 1912 aboard the Titanic.
It’s not hard to see why Victoria Pudding was served to fancy passengers. The flavors are layered and delicious, the texture is luxurious and creamy, and the compote is undeniably fancy. At first you get the flavor of the banana, then the floral notes from the orange flower water come in, and nothing is overpowering. The banana compote is quite a bit of work, and as it doesn’t add any new flavors to the dish, I think it’d be okay to skip it. If you’re going for maximum opulence, though, then definitely make it.
Victoria Pudding
Pouding à la Victoria
Take one pint of vanilla custard (Book of Ices, p. 23), add to it the purée of six large or eight small raw ripe bananas that have been pounded with one ounce of castor sugar, the pulp of two oranges and one lemon, and a quarter-pound of raw ripe or cooked pineapple; mix these together, and colour with a little of Marshall’s Apricot Yellow, and rub through a fine hair sieve; flavour with a wineglassful of orange-flower water, a teaspoonful of vanilla essence, and a wineglassful of brandy; pour the mixture into the charged freezer and freeze it to the consistency of a thick batter; then add half a pint of whipped cream that is sweetened with half an ounce of castor sugar; refreeze it and put it into a fancy pudding mould, place this in the charged ice cave for three and a half to four hours, during which time turn it occasionally from side to side, so as to get the ice evenly frozen. When ready to serve turn out the pudding in the usual way on to a dish, and serve round it a compote of bananas (see recipe).
This is a nice dish for a dinner or luncheon sweet, and if the mould has a pipe the space made by it can be filled with the compote of fruit.Compote of Bananas
Put two tablespoonfuls of thick apricot jam into a basin with the pulp of two bananas, a wineglassful of Marshall’s Maraschino Syrup, a few drops of Marshall’s Carmine, a saltspoonful of Marshall’s Apricot Yellow, the juice of one lemon and of one orange; mix these together with this purée three or four raw ripe bananas that have been freed from skin and sliced about a quarter of an inch thick; set it on ice till quite cold, then use.
— Fancy Ices by Agnes B. Marshall, 1894
August 5, 2024
What the First Astronauts Ate – Food in Space
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Apr 23, 2024Smooth, sweet, and sour Tang pie in a graham cracker crust
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1960sContrary to popular belief, NASA did not invent Tang, but the company that did, General Foods, used the association in a lot of their marketing. They even developed this recipe for Tang pie, also called astronaut pie.
The texture of the pie is smooth and very nice, but it had too much of a sour zip in it, or “tang” if you will, for me. If you like sour notes like in lemon meringue or key lime pies, or if you just like Tang, then I think you’ll like this. You can use a ready-made graham cracker crust to make this pie even easier to put together.
Tang Pie. It’s the pie of the future. Here it goes space boys and girls:
TANG Pie
1 can sweetened condensed milk
3/4 C. Tang® powder drink mix
1/2 C. sour cream
1 (9 oz.) tub Cool Whip®
1 graham cracker pie crust.
Mix condensed milk and Tang. Add in sour cream until well blended. Then fold in tub of Cool Whip. Pour into pie crust and refrigerate for 4 hours or until set and cold.
July 27, 2024
Dining on the Orient Express
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Apr 16, 2024Côtelettes d’Agneau à la Minute
Simple, delicious fried lamb cutlets with a lemon-butter sauce with swirls of Duchess PotatoesCity/Region: France
Time Period: 1903The food and dining cars of the Orient Express were a big part of the luxurious experience that drew in passengers. The chefs, who were brought in from top French institutions, prepared meals on moving train cars, sometimes themed to which countries the train was passing through.
These lamb cutlets are simple, tender, and delicious. The lemon-butter sauce has only two ingredients, and pairs perfectly with Duchess Potatoes for a wonderful meal (or more accurately, single course) aboard the Orient Express.
Côtelettes d’Agneau à la Minute
Cut the cutlets very thin, season them and shallow fry in very hot clarified butter. Arrange them in a circle on a dish, sprinkle with a little lemon juice and the cooking butter after adding a pinch of chopped parsley, Serve immediately.
— Le Guide Culinaire by Auguste Escoffier, 1903
July 19, 2024
Airline Food During the Golden Age of Air Travel
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Apr 9, 2024Back before airlines could compete with lower prices, they competed with the quality of atmosphere, service, and, of course, food.
I’d be happy to have this pot roast on the ground, let alone on an airplane. The meat is so tender that it falls apart, the vegetables and herbs give it wonderful flavor, and you get the added bonus of it making your house smell awesome as it simmers.
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July 15, 2024
What Pioneers ate on the Oregon Trail
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Apr 2, 2024Cornmeal cakes and the bacon in whose fat they were fried
City/Region: Oregon Trail
Time Period: 1856The Oregon Trail was tough. It was gruelling, food could become scarce, and even the drinking water was mostly unpalatable (not to mention the threat of dysentery). Emigrants packed well over 1,000 pounds of food into their wagons, staples like flour, bacon, coffee, sugar, rice, and hardtack (clack clack). They also relied on finding food like edible plants, fish, and game along the way.
These cornmeal cakes went by many names, including johnny cakes and hoe cakes. The ingredients are simple, but they’re surprisingly delicious. Without anything to leaven them, they’re a bit dense, but they taste great. The flavor is a combination of cornbread, sweet molasses, and bacon, kind of like a 19th century McGriddle. This is a great recipe to play around with. You could add some spices for a fancier version, swap out some of the water for milk, or use other fats or sweeteners.
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June 23, 2024
The Original Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Dinner
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 13 Mar 2024Absolutely fantastic tomato and meat sauce served over spaghetti tossed with butter and parmesan
City/Region: Cleveland, Ohio
Time Period: 1930sChef Boyardee was not born in Cleveland (sorry, 30 Rock), but in Borganovo, just outside of Piacenza in Italy. And his name was not Hector Boyardee, but Ettore Boiardi (boy-AR-dee). He opened an Italian restaurant in Cleveland in 1924, where the food was so popular that he frequently sent patrons home with bottles of his spaghetti sauce.
We can’t know exactly what that original sauce was, but this is from a family recipe and is probably pretty close. And it’s phenomenal. It’s fairly simple, but so good. You get a lot of the fresh basil, and the creaminess from mixing the butter and parmesan directly with the pasta is delicious. I don’t often make dishes from the show again, but I can see myself making this any day of the week.
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June 18, 2024
Spice: King Of The Poor Man’s Kitchen
Townsends
Published Mar 3, 2024One of the questions we seek to answer on our channel is that of the plight of poor folks in American history. What did they eat? How did they dress? Did they have enjoyment in life? They didn’t have the best cuts of meat or the most sought after ingredients. What they did have was plenty of flavor! Spice is the king of the poor man’s kitchen.
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June 16, 2024
What People Ate on Ellis Island
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Mar 5, 2024A complete Ellis Island meal: Tapioca Pudding, coffee, Beef and Barley Soup, and white bread.
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1887The food on Ellis Island could be pretty good or pretty terrible depending on when you were there. The quality went up and down a lot, but the food was always free to those who were staying on the island. A menu for the midday meal on Tuesday, January 20, 1920 lists English Beef Soup with Barley, Lamb Stew with Vegetables, Bread and butter substitute, Tapioca Pudding, Coffee. This recipe doesn’t use a lot of meat, but the marrow melts into the broth and there are plenty of vegetables and flavor, making for a hearty soup.
Beef Soup
Select a small shin of beef of moderate size, crack the bone in small pieces, wash and place it in a kettle to boil, with five or six quarts of cold water. Let it boil about two hours, or until it begins to get tender, then season it with tablespoonful of salt, and a teaspoonful of pepper; boil it one hour longer, then add to it one carrot, two turnips, two tablespoonfuls of rice or pearl barley, one head of celery and a teaspoonful of summer savory powdered fine; the vegetables to be minced up in small pieces like dice. After these ingredients have boiled a quarter of an hour, put in two potatoes cut up in small pieces; let it boil half an hour longer, take the meat from the soup, and if intended to be served with it, take out the bones and lay it closely and neatly on a dish, and garnish with sprigs of parsley.
Serve made mustard and catsup with it. It is very nice pressed and eaten cold with mustard and vinegar, or catsup. Four hours are required for making this soup. Should any remain over the first day, it may be heated, with the addition of a little boiling water, and served again. Some fancy a glass of brown sherry added just before being served. Serve very hot.
— The White House Cook Book, 1887.
June 14, 2024
Chef John’s Cream of Mushroom Soup – Pure Liquid Moon-Soaked Earth
Food Wishes
Published Dec 30, 2009[NR: I kid you not, this is the best cream of mushroom soup I’ve ever tasted. And I made it!]
I can’t believe I haven’t posted a video recipe for cream of mushroom soup! It’s such a classic cool weather staple, and quite simple to make – as long as you have a few hours to spare. The secret to this deep rich potage is a long slow caramelization, the key to unlocking the mushroom’s magic. Oh, and by the way, I mean that literally. Mushrooms are by far the most mysterious and magical things we eat.
Scientists still don’t really understand how and why they grow like they do. While every other food you eat gets its energy from the sun, Agaricus bisporus, the common button mushroom, does not. Some believe mushrooms are powered by the moon, which I find fascinating to contemplate.
This is a very minimalist formula, and meant to transform the browned bits of fungus into pure earthy essence of mushroom. You can use whatever exotic mushrooms you can get a hold of, but it works quite well with the ubiquitous white button mushroom. Enjoy!
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June 5, 2024
What Troops Ate On D-Day – World War 2 Meals & Rations
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published May 21, 2024D-Day Scrambled Eggs and Bacon served with toast and D-Day Lemonade
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1944The food in the final days leading up to D-Day was a definite improvement over the sad, dry sandwiches some soldiers had been getting. All-you-can-eat meals of steak, pork chops, sides, lemon meringue pie, ice cream, and even popcorn and candy during movie screenings kept the sequestered troops well fed. The last meal served before the landing was breakfast in the very early hours of the morning, said by many to be scrambled eggs and bacon.
This meal was made in the south of England, but the bacon was from the U.S., so American-style bacon is best here. The eggs don’t taste bad, but the texture is not like fresh scrambled eggs at all (more like tofu). The bacon is real, though, and that really saves the dish. Powdered eggs can be found online and at camping stores.
No. 749. Scrambled Eggs
Water, cold … 2 1/2 quarts (2 1/2 No. 56 dippers)
Eggs, powdered … 1 1/2 pounds (1/2 3-pound can)
Salt … To taste
Pepper … To taste
Lard or bacon fat … 1 pound (1/2 No. 56 dipper)Sift eggs. Pour 1/3 of the water into a utensil suitable for mixing eggs. Add powdered eggs. Stir vigorously with whip or slit spoon until mixture is absolutely smooth. Tip utensil while stirring.
Add salt, pepper, and remaining water slowly to eggs, stirring until eggs are completely dissolved.
Melt fat in baking pan. Pour liquid eggs into hot fat.
Stir as eggs begin to thicken. Continue stirring slowly until eggs are cooked slightly less than desired for serving.
Take eggs from fire while soft, as they will continue to thicken after being removed from heat.No. 750. Diced Ham (or Bacon) and Scrambled Eggs
Add 3 pounds of ham or bacon to basic recipe for scrambled eggs; omit lard. Fry ham or bacon until crisp and brown.
Pour egg solution over meat and fat. Stir and cook as in basic recipe. Additional fat may be needed if ham is used.
— TM 10-412 US Army Technical Manual. Army Recipes by the U.S. War Department, 1946
