Food That Time Forgot: Ships Biscuits 

okie

here are my people foods pastinaak, schorseneren, aardpeer, meiraap, raapstelen, koolrabi, koolraap en postelein. Zeekraal en lamsoor

You're so hot.

My favourite channel. Thank you so much for this wonderful content.

Oh no no

just a small dose of iron

​@@dante666jt by togr

Rofl - very good!

Damnit boi 😂

@@swampfire6600 probably a little bit of both

To be fair it still is in some areas of the US in rural rural areas. Out in the sticks in Eastern Kentucky I grew up calling it that and many still do and I'm not quite 40.

@@christianweatherbroadcasti3491 shut up

"The lighter the wheat, the less there is to eat."

​@@christianweatherbroadcasti3491you will be going to hell for this

I suppose technically the grubs would be pretty clean since all they've fed on is desiccated biscuit.

So, at this point then I'm wonding, why didn't they grow insects on the ships for eating? There are plenty of cultures who eat insects, such as Thailand. Many Thais love snacking on grasshoppers, crickets and woodworms. Or Ghana. During the springtime when food is scarce, Ghanaians rely on termites as their main source of protein. These are examples I found on Google. Also, why couldn't they bring along a few small barrels of soil for growing plants in? I think they had methods of water desalination back then. There are obviously answers out there, otherwise sailors wouldn't have been known to commonly die of malnutrition diseases such as scurvy. Also, I wonder where else I can ask these questions?

@@MrTrevortxeartxe they barely had enough water on ships for people and bugs are hard to store with just wood

​​​@@MrTrevortxeartxeonically my first thought was that if I were in a situation with only hard tack to eat and it became infested with insects, I would simply eat a fraction of the insects and allow them to reproduce in the tack as it would pretty much be farming them for somewhat sustainable protein. The obvious answer as to why many people dont think like that is historically people didnt understand nutrition very well and also insects taste disgusting and are very unpalatable. I've eaten plenty of insects and prefer to dry them and grind them into a flour, however eating an actual bug, guts legs and all is a truly upsetting experience, though I'm sure in some cultures people are very used to it. PS they definitely did *not* have water desalination back then and even today it's quite challenging and not common on ships

@@N8Dulcimer Oh my god, that's gross.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure he picked out a piece with no bugs in it.

Plot twist: it was rice

@@omppusolttu5799 he clearly visibily inspected it so he wasn't directly chompin on a juicy one, but still

@@andybunn5780 Makes no difference to me. If you see visible bugs in it, there will be insect eggs too that you don't see and what about insect saliva or whatever greasy substances that covers their body that touched other parts. Very disgusting i could not have done it (well it depends on $ too).

That's free meat, what's there not to like 😄?

Just like packing Nokia’s in your body armor. Just an older version. Heard in the north they started building homes out of the things. Drove the carpentry business down.

Well, now - why do a thing for just one reason when several reasons will do just as well? 🙂👍

18th century bulletproof vest

dont let Ukrainians hear this idea😆

Yeah, they could also throw it at their enemies and break their skulls!

Like clinking silver coins to make sure they’re real. Can’t be eating no counterfeit hardtack

lol I know right, I’m sure even the sailors did that too centuries ago

Like picking up Tongs.The clack must happen.

Max Miller from Tasting History shows a clip of him clacking hard tack together whenever it's mentioned.

Same thing with BBQ pincers. If you don't smack em together you ain't human :)

Wow. Did not know that. Heard the phrase before though.

You learn something new every day.

Wrong, it comes from a Nirvana song.

innit@@_munkykok_

@@_munkykok_no but they used it

🤣

The most important dwarven bread being, of course, Scone of Stone.

Also makes for a great weapon if needed.

This is the waybread that Galadriel gave to Gimli and the rest of the fellowship.

@@magister343Did you say... "Stone?!"

What do you eat now?

@@kaptein1247 processed and frozen foods cooked to beef jerky or medium rare regardless of the kind of meat

No scurvy is a huge improvement, in my opinion.

@@yaroslavromanyuk5669 yeah it was just a joke I know that the food is obviously better than what they had and the conditions are better, I definitely the food can be very subpar especially when running out of rations, I was once given a hamburger on raisin bread with mustard

lmao

As evidenced by worm larva in the center. 🤢

@@keithtorgersen9664 That's just extra protein that is. Good for growing boys.

A cask of incorruptible biscuits! They never go off... though some would argue that they were never on.

Just FYI: The larva wasn't planted there for sustenance. The bug put its babies there for shelter.

@@TRAMP-oline lol. Even the bugs know that it isn't edible.

I feel like the "cuit" is derived from the same vulgar latin which became French

Biscuit is literally a French word as far as I know, derived from the Latin term just as described in the first comment. I know several languages used very similar words too, such as biscotti in Italian, meaning exactly the same thing. It's pretty interesting how modern biscuits evolved into becoming dense dry cakes or cookies, usually sweet and eaten for desserts or snacks, instead of the more cracker-like form of the hard-dry bread they originally were at the time. It also feels a little funny to see things called soft biscuits, when in practice they most likely were baked only once, and kept moist on purpose, which I could say my teeth are the most thankful for, haha!

Haha coc

Also interesting how it means the dense, hard, sweet “biscuit” in England. But in America “biscuits” are light, fluffy, once-baked breads

Interestingly, we have "dvopek" (lit. twicebake) in Slavic countries, looks like your regular industrial sliced bread (usually intended for toasting) only dried out completely. Italian biscotti are biscuits (also dry), while over here "biskvit" is the soft sweet freshly baked stuff you layer with cream to make cake.

explode or explore?

@@user-jd3gf5xw1x explore, though it turned out to be both when we dropped one on a hard wood floor!

@@user-jd3gf5xw1x Obviously explode.

​@@user-jd3gf5xw1x both if you're good at it

our man was cooking up explosive hard tack@@user-jd3gf5xw1x

🥹

😂 Also, probably true.

I too remember that video.

Why the updated video??

@@alexscott8950 Because many of us wouldn't have seen the original one, and this one is probably better.

We all immediately thought of you 😆

@@amandag8741 Now I just call hard tack, clack clack.

Clack Clack!

“Clack Clack!” Said the Tack

@@amandag8741 Hahaha, so true! I remember watching that clip on Max channel 😆

Yeah me too!

It’s not hardtack without the clack!

Oh my, you could live 20 or more years, you’ll need supplies at some point ! Enjoy your days

If you haven't seen the video, Steve did eat a piece of hardtack from the Civil War that was baked in 1863.

He would have described the taste and texture of the insects

funnily enough, I was on a Steve1989 video just before watching this one!

i was looking for this comment. well played, comment-ninja.

@@DJBillyQ same. czech republic 24 hour ration

I have watched enough videos from Max Miller to know that. Almost sounds like roof tiles.🤣

​@@MomPickMeUpImScared-st4wiUnga bunga, monkey brain bash biscuit together

What's the British slang for "surrender"? Fack?

A corned beef stew

And he’ll share it with his mate

The vegetables came from a local farmer who didn't know he was helping.

And the bugs came from the biscuits. The biscuits were their homes.

Would be an interesting experiment to create modern soup rations out of freeze dried greens, either freeze dried or canned meat as well as those biscuits.

I was thinking of soaking one in water, then fry in oil. I wonder how that would turn out. Have your tried that?

@@thewiseguy3529 Oli and water mix well, and it helps to keep the eyes wide open when looking at the pan, and stay close to the action to see what happens. Also, turn up the heat to the max. Good luck!

@@_munkykok_ you obviously don't know anything about wet dough. Have fun eating out at the restaurants enjoy the boogers and butt juice

​@@thewiseguy3529u stupid?

Definitely not better than normal bread lol 😂. This guy never bit into a slice of brioche before that’s like heaven.

I think it's the simplistic nature of it that amazes us. So incredibly simple yet so fundamentally important.

and the fact that it could save your life some day

@Karl with a K by our standards it is not food, but it will keep you alive if you eat it

​​@Karl with a K well they didnt really have that much choice back then. I wonder if they ever caught and cooked fish. Did they have ovens in ships? Or was it not feasible?

​@Karl with a K wheat is good for you

and we are all giggling too

✝️🩸 Romans 1 KJV 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 1 Corinthians 15 KJV 1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: Romans 3 KJV 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; ♥️know♥️ 1 John 5 KJV 13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

It's been 5 days and I haven't made it past the first 30 seconds

@Joy David, I am Norwegian too, my paternal grandparents and maternal great grandma (my grandmother’s mother) emigrated somewhere between 1910-1920. But I hadn’t heard of that kind of bread in my family. We do joke in typical Norwegian fashion about lutefisk though.

I love this story. Does the bread have a special name? Or is it just called "bread" (in Norwegian)?

@@losthor1zon Maybe skonrok. From low German, meaning 'pale rye'.

My Norwegian ex's family here in Minnesota had some lutefisk that had been passed down for several generations. It has never been opened, and if you've ever smelled "fresh" lutefisk you can understand why.

@@Raskolnikov70 To the tune of "O Tannenbaum:" O lutefisk, O lutefisk, How strong is your aroma. O lutefisk, O lutefisk, You put me in a coma. You smell so strong, you look like glue, You taste yust like an overshoe, But, lutefisk, come Saturday, I t'ink I eat you anyvay. -- In loving memory of Eldo Kanikkeberg (1929-1993), Seattle's famous singing streetcar motorman.

aren't you an american without dental coverage? that's just financially irresponsible to bite into one.

@@HisameArtwork Who told you Americans don't have dental coverage?

@@HisameArtwork I'm Canadian, we don't have to worry about that.

@@TheLegless101 all the american comedians complaining about it. all the ppl complaining in the coments of those vids. and when we lived there we had to buy our own and it didn't cover the costs anyway. was just a waste of paperwork and plastic.

Eww it had years of grubby little kid hands on it.

Sounds like a bad case of iron deficiency to me.

Haha

Good one

lmao

We got the joke after 16 words, yet to carried on anyway, making the rest as boring to read as eating flour and...

Imagine getting an order for 100 barrels of ships biscuits

@@juggernaut316 the apprentice is going to hate that 😆

@@TheLord0Ice0Wind Nah, he'd just knead the dough using his feet.

@@LordDragox412 🤤🤤🤤

​@@juggernaut316 Sounds like something a character from H.P. Lovecraft's stories would order before embarking on a grand adventure with their crew on a suicidal mission 😂😂

I have eaten hard tack but never searched what an eggnog is and I don't know how to feel about it

Any thing hard is always good after being dunked in some thing tasty!

We would soak a piece of hardtack in the morning and it would be soft enough for us to crunch through it by lunch time. I remember a crew member forgot to soak his piece and had it in his pocket and dropped it from like 60' up in the rigging. It made a pretty good dent when it hit the deck and carried a lot of momentum as it ricocheted.

@@salmontanio212hammer dipped in mayonnaise

bizzulà, what an interesting word. It seems to turn up very few results online, it must be a really local dialectical word, right?

​@@ericpalacios920Yes bizulà is Romagnol word

What would this look like? I tried looking it up in Google Images as well and only see results of pizza! :)

@@firewolf34 looks like a donut with the shape like ouroboros

@@sentboumaster3436 yes, just like an ouroboros

I find that late 1800's to early 1900's period of naval history fascinating. There was such a rapid transition from sail to steam and then to steel, but so many of the ancient naval traditions - like food - didn't catch up with modernity for a long time. It's just weird to read about sailors on a WWI era battleship still eating hardtack and pease.

Do you have any reading material that you remember from the class? I would love to read about it

@@Hardlythere There are a lot of resources. The Public Library, City of San Diego and many other libraries in California might have old documents listing ship's stores. There are Naval History websites, and you can do online search for lists of ship's stores and bills of laden (not sure the spelling). In the 1970s we had to do the research the old way of reading books, copying the information, the references, author's information, and book titles for our reports. PS: The Spanish-Mexican dried cookie was designed for travel in the coaches, carts, wagons, and in backpacks which made it ideal for sea stores. I remember that it was sweet and made with cornmeal and would last for months. I tried to make it once and I must have done something wrong. It crumbled and would not stay together.

Random question just out of curiosity. Do you thing would be easy for a modern sailor to adapt to the menu on a ship from that era

?

wish i could tag Max but i think he will watch it this video anyway

It's very Max Miller.

It's inevitable he'll see this and love the callout

i simultaneously hate and love that you made me look that symbol up

@@chibi_bb9642 was it a boat symbol, or what was it? 🤣

😂

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE

Immoral*

I think it's so funny that Italy gave us the word "biscotti" but then have an entirely different word for biscuits. And also, in French, a galette is a flat tart. Language is weird.

@@Levacque It is indeed :) The etymology of galletta is "pebble". It denotes a dry and hard baked product, generally salty. In Italy almost every biscuit is called biscotto (also, pasticcino, dolcetto= pastry), but only ancient and traditional biscuits/cookies, such as the crisp Tuscan cantuci is the original biscotto(actually and lit. cooked/baked twice). Biscuit is Old French(bis-coctum, Latin).In France a galette can be anything really, even crêpes (Bretonne). In Spain las galletas are simply cookies, while bizcocho is a cake or some times a traditional biscuit.

@@edoardotomassoni4476 ahh I love complex etymology with regional specifics! That explanation just kept getting worse in the best possible way 😂

@@Levacque 😅🤣

@@edoardotomassoni4476 Biscuit also literally refers to its being baked twice.

Ich hab nie über die Etymologie nachgedacht, huh

@@truffeltroll6668 Ja, normaler Zwieback heißt auch so weil er zwei Mal gebacken wird. Einmal im Ganzen.und dann in Scheiben. Darum ist er so hart.

This is also the origin of the word “biscuit”, by the way - it derives from Latin: “bis”, twice; “coctus”, cooked.

Some etymology hunting on Google yielded this: “so named because originally biscuits were cooked in a twofold process: first baked and then dried out in a slow oven”.

@@ilbroducciore That makes sense.Almost ironic how the word changed meaning to generic dough products in many languages.

Glad I'm not the only one who saw that... we need a crossover ep!😄

Which series is Max from?

@@keithtorgersen9664 Tasting History, great channel!

*clack clack*

@@Oltoir Max participated in a Live Stream a couple or three years ago if I remember correctly. It was fun and very informative.

max miller married a man! ABOMINATION! Better to be on THIS page where people are NORMAL! LEVITICUS 18:22 ROMANS 1:22-32.

They still make them. However, they are only baked once, whereas the originals were baked twice. But we live in modern times, so you can order them online. These have been dried a bit, though.

Where I grew up they sold those in stores. Not that there was ever a shortage of regular very tasty bread so, even as a child, I was baffled why anyone would buy them. They tasted OK, a bit like bread with fennel seeds but not quite. There must have been other herbs added. They were as hard as those in the video judging by the sound. I ate them maybe a couple of times, just for the heck of it. It was work.

@@fotticelli Could say the same about spam, corned beef, baloney yet it still sells. All my old grandparents used to eat all these and their favourite memories during wartime was eating these foods, so eating them today is a way to experience that nostalgia.

They still make them in Katwijk i had one this weekend !

​@@timokruis8171where in katwijk?

I'm sure the barrel is edible, but what about the biscuits?

@@LordDragox412 I don’t know - ask the mealworms 🤷🏻‍♂️

@@SebMoellerM I can't, they've already became my meal!

​@@LordDragox412 clever, he did say the barrel was edible

@@LordDragox412 😂😂😂

I mean...back then they didn't have modern pesticides. Bugs were...and I know some people will be shocked...part of the nature where they grew the food. Sometimes it was simply cooked and eaten or simply cut around and then eaten.

As my grandfather would say “Eh, they don’t eat much.”

to my admittedly limited knowledge, all types of "white grub" larvae are completely edible - bee and wasp larva, maggots, those big fat ones you find under the bark of old trees, etc etc - as long as they are clean. Of course there's a serious dislike of the idea of using maggots for food, but that's because they're usually in gross stuff. Plenty of other crawly guys are edible too, ofc

@@TherronKeen also bonus extra protein, something hard to come by for poor families.

@@thebravegallade731 uh I don't know If I should say this but someone has to. There is no extra protein from the same food source your body can just synthesise them too.

Yes, Bloody Jack! I was the only person I knew who read the series. Good to see someone else give it recognition.

the know how of combining flour water and salt? yeah a real hard recipe to keep track of and remember, you're right.

Another Marine dish was impolitely called $|π!T on a Shingle, using some kind of canned beef hash and gravy, poured over hard tack rations.

@@kimfleury not a Marine dish, just a dish that was served to everyone starting in WW1 Tasting History did a video about it.

@@icebite9888 The secret is not in the making, but the prepping for long life use. Perfect cooking, sealing, storing and ofcourse making the rocks edible.

​@icebite9888 - Before this video, did you know how long and at what temperature to cook it to become hardtack without burning it?

That's interesting

In Poland "special biscuits" or "panzer wafle" as we call them, are "must have" elements in army MRE's

@@michakoniecko853 how is Poland for coloured tourists ? I really am fascinated by the history and culture of Poland and I would love to visit but I have heard some not so pleasant stories from Indians and Africans who visited Poland. Please tell me if it’s okay to go?

Ah I too enjoy eating rocks,

​@@Sachinrockzful This summer there were many tourists from Qatar and other middle eastern countries. It's safe for people of color, but some Poles might make rude remarks about them.

Eww that sounds nasty! Sorry, but it just does!

@@salmontanio212 nah sounds delicious, nothing better than fish and bread, except maybe fish and potatoes

​@@salmontanio212 are you American?

​@@salmontanio212it iss fried fish and biscuit, how is that sound nasty?

What were they soaked in? I’m curious, would like to try and make it myself 🙂

Me too!

Not to be confused with panzerschokolade

The Germans have adopted it I think, we call it Knäckebrot here. Popular as a food to take to school/to eat out and about!

"I mean, it is _not_ good for you, but it tastes really nice" seems to sum up the entire Scottish approach to cuisine. And I for one can respect that.

I went to google and found a recipe, I’m going to try them, they look good !!!

Max Miller's gleeful smile will haunt us to our dying days.

As opposed to preparing for past emergencies? Why is "future" in quotes?

@@filonin2 Because he obviously means the not so far future.

What kind of emergency?

@@comsubpac The British are coming! 😂

@@filonin2 Kind of difficult to prep for something in past unless there is a chance it will happen again in the "future".

Ah yes...for us on out S2 7.9 it was Twinkies....they would last for several seasons and still be edible (...some wild chemicals in those things I am sure) 😂

If you really want to go with that theme, build a spud locker on your sailboat!

I’m in on the ship’s twinkies ! Spud locker has a ring to it. We just toss the Pringles cans into the sailboat oven which is never used but will now be called a Spud Locker. Pringles are easy to pour and pass around while sailing. I wonder how hard tack was stored ?

Ohhhh barrels !

@@toniwadsworth7577 I first saw the term on the USS Alabama while touring it a while back, there was a door with an engraved brass plaque and I thought it sounded super fancy. I have no idea why they needed a separate storage space for potatoes (ventilation, maybe?) but the idea that they were so important to the US Navy that they required their own designated "locker" was interesting :)

You had a antique treasure!!

Fascinating!

You baked the hardtack?

I mean you can't do go wrong with Flour and Water xD

I think if you bake any recipe long enough you wind up with hardtack. Sort of like that old Cosby stand-up routine where he talks about how everything he messed up in wood shop became an ashtray by carving a couple of notches into it.