Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 15 Apr 2025Golden brown fried pastries filled with a fruit and spice paste
City/Region: Paris
Time Period: c. 1393Fast food has been around since the Middle Ages, and while a lot has changed in food production and cooking in the last six hundred years or so, then, as now, you could get a fried apple pie.
Rissoles were fried filled pastries (modern versions are usually some kind of filling rolled in breadcrumbs and fried), and they could be made savory or sweet. These ones are made with roasted apples, raisins, figs, and sweet spices. I chose cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, but you can choose whatever spices you like.
It is common that rissoles are made of figs, raisins, roast apples, and nuts peeled to imitate pine nuts, and powder of spices [and a little fine salt]; and let the paste be well saffroned and then let them be fried in oil [and sugar them].
— Le Ménagier de Paris, c. 1393
September 19, 2025
What Medieval Fast Food Restaurants Were Like
September 12, 2025
Ancient Roman Table Manners & Etiquette
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 8 Apr 2025Spiral-shaped fritters drizzled with honey and sprinkled with white poppyseeds
City/Region: Rome
Time Period: 2nd Century B.C.E.These fritters are kind of like a mix between globi and jalebi. The batter is simple like the globi, made of just spelt flour and ricotta, but they’re piped into hot fat in spiral shapes like jalebi. The technique can be a little tricky to get right so that the spirals hold together, but you should get about 12 to 15 tries out of the amount of batter this recipe makes.
The encytum are delicious and kind of remind me of a healthy pancake, but with honey instead of maple syrup. They don’t stay crispy for very long, so plan on serving them right away if you’d like to retain maximum crispness.
Make encytum the same way as globi, except that you use a vessel with a hole in the bottom which you can stream through into hot fat, and shape like the spira, coiling and turning it with two sticks. Spread and color with honey while still warm. Serve with honey or mulsum.
— De Agri Cultura by Cato the Elder, 2nd century B.C.E.
September 5, 2025
How To Host An Ancient Roman Dinner
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 1 Apr 2025Roast duck basted with defrutum and served with a sweet and savory dipping sauce atop a bed of herbs
City/Region: Rome
Time Period: 1st CenturyFirst off, this is not a flamingo. While they’re still eaten in some parts of the world, where I live is not one of those parts. I’m using a duck instead, and it’s absolutely delicious.
The real star of this dish is the sauce, which I think would go well with pretty much anything. It’s sweet at first, then you get the savoriness and complexity of the herbs and spices along with a luxurious richness from the duck drippings. It might just be my favorite Roman sauce that I’ve made (and I’ve made quite a few).
For flamingo:
Pluck the flamingo wash, tie, and put it in a pot; add water, salt, dill, and a little vinegar. Half-way through cooking, add a bundle of leek and cilantro and cook. When it is nearly done add defrutum to give it color. Pound in a mortar pepper, cumin, coriander, silphium, mint, rue; moisten with vinegar, add dates, pour over some of the drippings. Put it in the pot, thicken with starch, pour the sauce over the bird, and serve. The same recipe can be used for parrot.
— Apicius De re coquinaria, 1st Century
August 29, 2025
The History of Hungarian Goulash
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 25 Mar 2025Hungarian goulash with beef, paprika, potatoes, and tomato
City/Region: Hungary
Time Period: Late 19th Century, written down in 1935The development and history of goulash mirrors the history of Hungary in a really interesting way, and the story goes something like this:
800s: A group of people from the Ural Mountains called the Magyars settled the area. Being herdsmen, they brought with them a dish of boiled meat or stew.
1400s: The Hungarian king imported Italian ingredients, like onions, and hired Italian chefs to please his new wife, who was from Naples.
1500s: Hungary becomes part of the Ottoman Empire, and thus ingredients like coffee and paprika enter Hungarian cuisine.
1800s: Two brothers invent a machine to remove the seeds and ribs from hot peppers in order to make sweet paprika.
This recipe from the late 19th century reflects all of these developments, with the meat, onions, and sweet paprika. It is so delicious and really easy to make. If you’ve never had real Hungarian goulash (which is a soup, not a thick stew), give this a try!
Bográcsgulyás
1 kg (2 1/4 lb) beef
80 g (5 Tbs) lard
300 g (1 3/4 cups) onion
20 g (4 tsp) paprika
salt, caraway seeds, garlic
1 kg (2 1/4 lb) potato
140 g (1 cup) green pepper
60 g (1 small) fresh tomato
6 portions of soup paste (csipetke, Recipe 14)
Use meat rich in gelatine (shin-beef, blade or neck). Cube the meat into 1.5-2 cm (1/2-3/4 in) pieces. Fry the chopped onion in the melted lard (shortening) until it is golden yellow. Lower the heat, then add the paprika, stir it rapidly, add the meat, keep on stirring, add salt. When the meat is browned and all the liquid is evaporated, add the caraway seeds, finely chopped garlic and a small amount of cold water, cover, and braise the meat slowly. Stir it occasionally and add small quantities of cold water, cover, and braise the meat slowly. Stir it occasionally and add small quantities of water if necessary. The meat should be braised, not boiled. While the meat is cooking, cube the potatoes, green pepper and tomatoes into pieces 1 cm (1/3 in) in size and prepare the dough for the soup pasta (csipetke). Just before the meat is completely tender, reduce the pan juices, add the cubed potatoes, let them brown slightly, add the stock, green pepper and tomato. When the potato is almost cooked and the soup is ready to be served, add the pasta (csipetke), and adjust quantity by the addition of stock or water.
— Károly Gundel, late 19th century
August 22, 2025
History’s Oldest Dessert – 4,000 Year Old Mersu
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 18 Mar 2025Short pastry filled with pistachios and dates
City/Region: Mari, Mesopotamia
Time Period: c. 1800 B.C.E.In the ancient ruined Mesopotamian city of Mari, a clay tablet receipt from 4,000 years ago was found that mentioned dates and pistachios for making mersu for the king. We don’t know exactly what mersu was or if there were other ingredients in it, but I think there was more to it than just dates and pistachios. The king employed eight specialists who made mersu, so my guess is that it was at least as complicated as this pastry, possibly much more so.
The flavor combination in this interpretation is wonderful. The pastry is a little crumbly, and the filling is chewy, rich, and quite sweet, with the added texture of the nuts.
I made my pastry dough unsweetened and I really liked the contrast between the unsweetened dough and the very sweet filling, but you can add some date syrup or honey to your dough if you’d like.
1 gur of dates
And 10 sila of pistachios
For making mersu
Meal of the king
— Receipt from Mari, c. 1800 BCE
August 15, 2025
The History of Pancit in the Philippines
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 11 Mar 2025Rice and egg noodles cooked with shrimp and pork belly, and garnished with calamansi and hard-boiled egg
City/Region: Manila
Time Period: 1919Pancit, a distinctly Filipino dish, has its roots in the food brought and cooked by Chinese immigrants who began moving to the Philippines in significant numbers by the 15th century. Like many immigrant communities, the Chinese in the Philippines cooked and sold food from, or close to, that of their homeland.
The flavor in this dish is so wonderful and complex and I really like the texture of the thin rice noodles and thicker egg noodles. The homemade shrimp liquor not only reduces waste, but adds so much flavor.
A note on ingredients: Some of the Filipino ingredients may be hard to come by, so I’ve included some substitutions in the ingredients list that may be easier to find.
1/8 kilo miki
1/8 kilo bijon
1/8 kilo pork
25 shrimps
3/4 cup water
1/2 head garlic
1 tablespoon kinchay
1/2 onion
1 cake bean cake
1 hard-boiled egg
1 tablespoon patis
6 calamansis
Cut the bean cake in small pieces. Peel the shrimps; pound the shells in a mortar; strain the juice and save it. Cook the pork; add the bean cake. Sauté the shrimps; when cooked, remove them and the bean cake from the carajay. Fry the onion and the garlic; remove from the carajay. Put the pork, the shrimps, and the bean cake in the carajay; add the patis; cook a few minutes. Soak the bijon in water 4 minutes. Wash the miki. Add the miki and the bijon to the mixture in the carajay; add the shrimp liquor. Cover and cook slowly 10 minutes. Serve with fried garlic and with slices of boiled egg. Cut the calamansis in halves and serve with pansit.
— Housekeeping: A Textbook for Girls in the Public Intermediate Schools of the Philippines by Susie M. Butts, 1919
August 7, 2025
War Rationing on the Italian Home Front during WWII
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 4 Mar 2025Dry, dense wartime version of a traditional chestnut cake with lemon zest and no sugar
City/Region: Italy
Time Period: 1942Food shortages in Italy began years before WWII broke out, and cookbooks that focused on food scarcity had been published as early as 1935. They included recipes for things like soup made from vegetable peels and, like this recipe’s cookbook, instructions for cleaning when soap was rationed.
Castagnaccio is a traditional Tuscan chestnut cake, and this sugarless version is, I imagine, a far cry from what it should be. The cake is very dry, then turns gummy when you chew it, and I definitely recommend having something to wash it down (though you should probably just make a non-wartime version). The flavor isn’t bad, and the lemon really comes through, but it could really use some kind of sweetener.
Chestnut flour cake (without sugar).
What a sweet and lucky surprise to find in your pantry, still in its bag, some chestnut flour which you had completely forgotten about (an incredible thing, indeed, in these times!). Well, such a surprising and lucky circumstance happened to me, in these days, and since you must immediately take advantage of every piece of luck, I…measured 200 grams of the sweet flour; I poured it in a small bowl; I added half a tablespoon of oil, a pinch of salt and only the grated yellow part of a lemon zest; I mixed everything with as much milk as needed (I would have used water if I didn’t have milk at home); I added a whole sachet of yeast; I mixed everything well again; I poured everything in an oiled cake pan; I put the pan in the oven (not too hot); and…when I saw that the cake was swollen and baked…when I put it on the table in front of my family…insatiable gluttons…when the cake was celebrated…
“how lucky we were, mom, since you forgot about the flour” (the kids);
“today’s sweet cake is truly delicious” (the husband);
“what a pity the cake is so small” (the servant girl in her mind)
“it’s lucky that I was able to find such a good remedy for my unforgivable forgetfulness” (me, in my heart).”
— 200 Tips for…these times by Petronilla, 1942
July 29, 2025
The Original Girl Scout Cookie Recipe from 1922
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 25 Feb 2025The original Girl Scout sugar cookies, some round, some cut with my 1950s Girl Scout cookie cutter (post-baking)
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1922During the early years of Girl Scout cookies, the girls would bake the cookies themselves. This recipe, from The American Girl, the magazine published by the Girl Scouts, is from the first year of the official cookie sales in 1922. The scouts would continue to bake the cookies they sold for 12 more years until the task was turned over to commercial bakeries in 1934.
These are fairly standard sugar cookies, but they are delicious. They bake up nice and crispy, and the sugar sprinkled on top is a lovely touch. I could easily see myself eating dozens of them without even noticing.
ATTENTION SCOUTS! FORWARD MARCH! BAKE! SELL!
This is your chance to show how much Scouting means to you.
GIRL SCOUT COOKIES
1 cup of Butter, or substitute
1 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons of milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of baking powderCream butter and sugar, add well beaten eggs, then milk, flavoring, flour and baking powder. Roll thin and bake in quick oven. (Sprinkle sugar on top.) This amount makes six to seven dozen.
— The American Girl magazine, 1922.
July 19, 2025
Pineapples – The Most Expensive Fruit in History
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 18 Feb 2025Mini tarts with a buttery crust and syrupy pineapple and wine filling
City/Region: England
Time Period: 1736For hundreds of years, the pineapple was a status symbol for the very wealthiest of European royalty and nobility. A single pineapple could cost $10,000 in today’s money, and pineapples turned up in architecture, tableware, paintings, clothing, and accessories. Many knew what pineapples looked like, but few had actually tasted one.
And that’s a real shame, because these tarts are absolutely delicious. The crust is good, but the real showstopper is the filling. Pineapple is the main flavor, but the wine gives it a wonderful complexity. You could even make just the filling and serve it with some whipped cream or ice cream and it would be amazing. If you have any leftover syrup, it would go great in some cocktails.
To make Paste. From Mrs. Peasly.
…If you would have a sweet Paste; then take half a Pound of Butter, and rub it into about a Pound of Flour, with two or three Ounces of double-refined Sugar powder’d, and make it a Paste, with cold Milk, some Sack and Brandy. This is a very good one.To make a Tart of Ananas, or Pine-Apple. From Barbadoes.
Take a Pine-Apple, and twist off its Crown: then pare it free from the Knots, and cut it in Slices about half an Inch thick; then stew it with a little Canary Wine, or Madera Wine, and some Sugar, till it is thoroughly hot, and it will distribute its Flavour to the Wine much better than any thing we can add to it. When it is as one would have it, take it from the Fire; and when it is cool, put it into a sweet Paste, with its Liquor, and bake it gently, a little while, and when it comes from the Oven, pour Cream over it, (if you have it) and serve it either hot or cold.
— The Country Housewife and Lady’s Director by R. Bradley (6th Edition), 1736
July 12, 2025
Feeding Emperor Augustus Caesar – Handmade Roman Cheese
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 11 Feb 2025Fresh handmade cheese as Augustus might have enjoyed it with some bread and figs
City/Region: Rome
Time Period: 1st CenturyAugustus, a man meticulous about his public image and about consolidating power as the first emperor of Rome, had rather simple tastes when it came to food. Suetonius, a Roman historian from the first and second centuries, wrote in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars that Augustus “preferred the food of the common people, particularly the coarse sort of bread, small fishes, fresh, moist, hand-pressed cheese, and green figs of the second crop”.
This recipe from the first century does indeed make a fresh, moist, hand-pressed cheese that is slightly nutty and is a clear predecessor to modern mozzarella. It’s just as historically accurate if you make it with goat, sheep, or cow milk, you just need to make sure that the milk is pasteurized, not ultra-pasteurized, and that it’s non-homogenized.
Note that this recipe is vegetarian if you use vegetable rennet.
Cheese should be made of pure milk which is as fresh as possible … It should usually be curdled with rennet obtained from a lamb or a kid … and equally well with fresh sap from a fig-tree … The least amount of rennet that a pail of milk requires weighs a silver denarius … It is sprinkled with pounded salt … Some crush green pine nuts and mix them with the milk and curdle it in this way … Their method of making what we call “hand-pressed” cheese is the best-known of all: when the milk is slightly congealed in the pail and still warm, it is broken up and hot water is poured over it, and then it is shaped by hand.
— De re rustica by Columella, 1st century
July 5, 2025
Surviving a Medieval Winter
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 4 Feb 2025Hearty wheat berry porridge thickened with egg yolks and tinted with saffron
City/Region: France
Time Period: c. 1300There was little in the way of fresh food during a medieval winter. Meat, if you could get it, was salted, brined, or smoked (or some combination of the three). During some particularly harsh winters in the beginning of the 1300s, rivers froze for months at a time, making it impossible for water-powered mills to grind wheat into flour.
At such a time, this hearty porridge would be just the ticket. Everyone ate frumenty during the Middle Ages, from royalty to peasants, though wealthier people would add expensive spices and sugar and serve it with venison.
This frumenty is made of whole wheat berries and is a rib-sticking, satisfying meal all by itself. The wheat berries retain some wonderful texture so that it’s not just a mush, and egg yolks add richness and flavor. It’s more flavorful than I thought it would be, but I’d add some cinnamon and sugar.
Formentee
Take wheat, prepare it, wash it very well, and cook it in water. When it is cooked, drain it. Take cow’s milk and bring it to a boil, add the wheat, and boil it again stirring frequently. Remove it from the fire, stir often, and add in plenty of beaten egg yolks, and it should not be too hot when they are added. Some people add spices, a little saffron and venison stock. It should be yellowish and quite thick.
— Le Viandier de Taillevent by Guillaume Tirel, c. 1300
June 28, 2025
The Original Beef Stroganoff of Imperial Russia
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 28 Jan 2025Tender cubes of beef seasoned with allspice and served with a delicious sour cream and mustard sauce
City/Region: Russia
Time Period: 1871Beef stroganoff has certainly gone through a lot of changes since this recipe was printed in 1871. Nowadays mushrooms are often added, and the allspice has pretty much disappeared, but I think it’s a delicious and unusual flavor for modern palates. The mustard flavor is present in the sauce without being super mustardy, and the beef is tender and flavorful.
This tasty dish comes together fairly quickly after the meat has rested with the seasonings, so I definitely recommend giving this a try.
Two hours prior to cooking take two funts of tender beef, cut in small cubes, and sprinkle with salt and allspice; take 30 grams butter and 1 tablespoon of flour and mix, lightly fry in a skillet, then mix with 2 glasses of stock, add 1 teaspoon of Sarepska mustard, a little bit of pepper, mix well, bring to a boil, then strain and add 2 tablespoons of the best fresh sour cream. Then fry the beef in butter, then add it to the sauce, boil again, and serve.
— Podarok molodym khozyaykam (A Gift to Young Housewives) by Elena Molokhovets, 1871
June 21, 2025
Cheese Gnocchi from Medieval Italy
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 21 Jan 2025Groove-less cheese-based gnocchi from before potatoes were introduced
City/Region: Italy
Time Period: 14th CenturyGnocchi has been around for hundreds of years, and unsurprisingly, the gnocchi of the 14th century was quite a bit different from what we’re used to today. Before the potato was even a twinkle in Italy’s eye, cheese was a common base for the dough.
The first mention of grooves on gnocchi isn’t until 1570 when Bartolomeo Scappi writes about them, so this gnocchi is groove-less. The texture is very different from modern versions. It’s more crumbly, but that could depend on the kind of cheese that you use. Whatever you use, make sure it’s a cheese that you like, because this is essentially boiled cheese held together with some flour and egg. I may not eat a whole bowl of this, but it’s still quite nice.
If you want gnocchi. Take fresh cheese and pound it; then take flour and mix it with egg yolk in the manner of migliacci. Put a pot filled with water on the fire and when it boils, put the mixture on a board and spoon it off into the pot, and when they are cooked, place them on dishes and sprinkle on plenty of grated cheese.
— Fragment of a book on cooking from the 14th century
June 14, 2025
Surviving on Tulip Bulbs during World War 2 – Dutch Hunger Winter
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 14 Jan 2025Mashed potatoes, red cabbage, carrots, kale, and tulip bulbs
City/Region: The Netherlands
Time Period: 1945The Netherlands was relatively well off for food during much of WWII up until the harsh winter of 1944-1945. A combination of factors like German occupation, extreme weather conditions, and lack of Allied relief resulted in the population existing on only 500 calories a day. Tulips, a major Dutch export, were stored as dried bulbs, and the government issued documents that instructed people on how to prepare them safely.
If you make this dish, be sure to use organic bulbs and remove the yellow sprout in the center of the bulb completely as described in the instructions below. The yellow center is what can make you sick.
The flavor of the dish comes from the vegetables, and the unique flavor of the bulbs is lost in everything else. Save at least one bulb back before you mash it to taste it. Different varieties of tulip bulbs are supposed to have different flavors, and mine had a kind of earthy metallic sweet taste that was quite unlike anything I’ve ever had.
Stamppot with Tulip Bulbs
1 kg of vegetables, 1/2 kg of potatoes, 1/2 kg tulip bulbs, salt, oil.
Clean and finely chop the vegetables. Scrub the potatoes and quarter them. Clean the tulip bulbs. Put everything in a pot with a little water and salt. Boil for 30 to 45 minutes. Mash everything and add oil to taste.
— Dutch State Office for Preparation of Food Distribution, 1945
May 13, 2025
Gout – The Disease of Kings
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 7 Jan 2025Sliced roast venison with a spiced red wine sauce and a sprinkling of salt
City/Region: England
Time Period: 1723Gout has plagued people for thousands of years, but mostly the rich people. It often follows an indulgent diet full of red meat and alcohol, so for a long time only the rich had regular access to a gout-inducing food.
This recipe from 1723 is delicious, as well it ought to be as it flies in the face of the rules you should follow to prevent gout with venison (red meat) served with a wine sauce (alcohol). Venison is best when it’s not cooked past medium, and this recipe is tender and flavorful with the rosemary coming through. The sauce could really go on anything, and you could swap out the red wine for something different. Port would be delicious, though I would reduce the amount of sugar a bit.
I don’t expect most people will have a larding needle on hand, and I think you could probably skip the larding and still end up with a flavorful, tender dish.
To roast a Haunch of Venison.
First lard it with Bacon, and stick it thin with Rosemary; then roast it with a brisk Fire; but let it not lye too near it; bate it with fresh Butter; then boil a Pint of Claret with a little beaten Ginger, Cinnamon and Sugar, with a half a dozen whole Cloves, and some grated bread; and when they have boil’d enough, put in a little Salt, Vinegar and fresh Butter; dish your Venison, strew Salt about the Dish, and serve it with this Sauce.
— The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary: Or, the Accomplish’d Housewives Companion by John Nott, 1723
