When my Dad was a teenager in the 50s he worked in a butcher shop. He told me there was an old lady that would come in and get the oxtail. The butcher would give it to her because it was something he would usually throw away because nobody wanted it. Oxtail was regarded as poor people's food in that place and time. Now oxtail costs more than many cuts of beef. Funny how that works.
Same for the cuts of beef and pork you now make spareribs out of here in Germany....for the longest time they were considered poor quality meat and now cost as much as a full chunk of pork or beef (can't get a good translation ^^)
In some south American or African lands poor people collect clams and similar sea food. For them it's desperate times food, because it's bad tasting. Meanwhile in EU same stuff costs so much.
When I was a kid we were so poor we raised most of what we ate. We had fruit trees and a big garden. We raised chickens for eggs and rabbits for meat. We canned and froze enough to get us through the winter. At 54 I am in a good place financially but I cant afford to eat like I did as a kid. Now it is called "local organic" produce and "organic free range" rabbit. Too rich for me as a grown man. Go figure. I still love me some beans and potatoes though!
SteppapaJon I ate a lot of tubers and beans as a kid as well and do remember having chickens. Like you said now it’s a fortune to eat like a poorer person, the upper echelon caught on to what is truly healthy eating.
Officer Barbrady had a rural upbringing it’s just that people caught on to what really matters when it comes to your health. The older folk knew that the diet that wasn’t opulent actually had purpose in fueling the grueling work that needed to be done and there were results in real time to back it up, as a kid you didn’t pay attention to any of that but as an adult when you reflect you see things for what they are.
fun fact about diabetes, in my dad's hometown in north africa they would have you pee outside and if ants came to your urine (because of the sugar) that would be a sign you had diabetes
@Steve Slade ants I think they are brainless hiveminds controlled by the queen. Go retrieve food...go retrieve nesting...go tend the eggs..come straight back..go again, repeat And so when they go to your high sugar content urine then it's the sustenance they are there for , I'm pretty sure ants literally work until they die.
@@astondias810 it s life really, in a way they are all an extension to the queen. They don't miss each other conciously like humans, instead of missing there's this term"bio-relation" which means literally "anything can miss anything" but unless the one doing the missing is human, it will be different rather that if a human Lost a companion, ally, etc. It will be more like, they recognize that all life benefits from the work of other beings.
riplip and there is a another thing ants never go to sleep for their whole lives they are just mindless beings (kinda like bees) controlled by their mother and if many die she just pops out 200 more
Most people would take weapons and technology with them if they could go back in time with a time machine, instead you can just take your spice rack with you and become the most powerful person in medieval times.
imagine, you walk into the biggest castle you see, the king demands to know who you are, and you whip out about 30 modern day dollars worth of spices including stuff like sumac or cayenne pepper and everyone falls to their knees and the king just goes "welp, i cant compete with that" and walks out
@@Soullessknight1999 this is assuming that _you_ had to be the one supplying that firepower. There's a thing called connections, and that ties in with personal security. When you know a lot of important people, you can have _them_ sell off the spices, and in the meanwhile you have a cut of the profit. Nobody would lynch you for your precious stuff, and the (presumed) merchant would get all the more richer. Of course, you can also hire mercenaries. Their reliability however, depends.
If you are not in any way part of the local merchant guild you may find it hard to sell your goods. They may even interrogate you how these spices came into your possession. If you're lucky the local Magistrate or Lord of the land just will confiscate your goods and let you go free, since you have no authority backing up and protecting your interests in a lawful accepted manner. And can you even prove that you payed all your taxes?
personally id rather become a doctor...think about it, a simple first aid course would be the equivalent of being an leading brain surgeon back in the medieval era! that and id love to go back in time and just buy stock in companies i know will never go under...
I think it's awesome to think that someone like me (a young lower middle class bloke) has a pantry, spice collection and book collection that would make any medieval king drop their jaw.
We have a saying in Germany that literally translates "To give away the spoon." It actually means to die. And it refers back to the custom of having your personal cutlery for a lifetime. Great channel and great series about medieval food!
Here in Vojvodina (the northern part of Serbia, where there used to be a larger population of Germans from Bavaria and, especially, Swabia, before WW2), we seemed to have borrowed the saying, 'Baciti kašiku', which means the same thing. There's also the expression 'Baciti peglu' ('To throw away the flat iron'), meaning 'to throw up, barf' (due to overeating or overdrinking).
What a beautiful irony that it was a point of pride for a knight or a small lord to have a spice chest in their kitchen full of expensive and exotic spices, all procured through special trade or crusade to elevate the flavors in your daily food to new heights... ... and in truth, the lower "peasant" class has figured out how to make a meal 3 times tastier than yours on cheap ingredients native to the region without having to take a single step away from their town or farm.
@@bighands69 They were reliant on the government in a very negative way in that their immutable social station was completely defined by the feudal system that they lived under. Remember that commons like the sea, sunlight, air, seaweed etc. were deemed to be the property of their lords' jurisdiction. Less spoon fed but certainly not free.
@@bighands69 Less reliance? They could arbitrarily confiscate anything you owned. If you disagreed they would burn your village down and kill your family.
It is hard to say. On top of Jason's own taste here, we would never taste the dishes like it was supposed to taste back then due to an infinite amount of reasons. They even cite that in a previous episode.
@@darkzerk7 muriKAAAAAA. Seriously my man, you need to read an actual book of laws from the medieval period, there are many well preserved ones. It's not like your shitty Game of Thrones show.
Actually, the fact that higher class food increasingly tastes like Christmas makes a lot of sense. Christmas is one of, if not the, biggest feast of the year, so you would use the finest ingredients you could get. Honestly even today making a fruitcake, for example, is relatively expensive, with all the spices, nuts, dried and candied fruit, and alcohol.
My grandmother and her mother, my great gran, used to make real homemade fruitcakes. They started in sept and gathered all the candied fruits like cherries/pineapple /citron/all types of current and raisins and ginger.(also nuts. I almost forgot) I remember the dried currents and raisins were soaked in christen brothers brandy for a week. Then all the spices and once they got them all baked and wrapped and placed in tins they opened them one or 2 times a week and Brushed them with a half sugar half brandy(or dark rum it just depended on what they had) and then back into the tins. I have to say the flavor of these fruit cakes were wonderful and lovely. Nothing like the store bought stuff. Once they passed away no one did it any longer. It was also very expensive. Another holiday treat that my grandmother loved was these dried fruit trays. They were always beautifully made but not my favorite thing. Dried and candied citrus and pineapple and other tropical fruits and almost always there were little piles of marzipan fruits in the middle that were beautiful. Oh and stuffed dates. These too kinda fell out of fashion But i also remember getting oranges and apples in my Christmas stocking with candy and a few small toys amd i loved oranges as a child.
I knew about tasting urine for diabetes. But here’s a new one, my youngest sister diagnosed her diabetes because she had been urinating frequently at night. She went wilderness camping and had to keep relieving herself at night on a bush to the edge of the campsite. She noticed the next day that honey bees were all over it! Other bushes of the same sort were bee free. As an experiment, she poured urine on another kind of bush, and within 10 minutes, the bees arrived. When she went to the doctor, he thought it was just hilarious, but he tested her and sure enough, she had diabetes!
It kind of amuses me to think about how precious spices were back then. There's always the quote floating around about how you could blow someone's mind from the olden days by showing them a cellphone, or something like that. But I think what would stagger them even more would be to take them to any local supermarket and show them the spice aisle. You could buy literal pounds of spices for a pittance, and get them whenever you want, rather than having to fork over tons of gold and wait for them to be painstakingly caravnned in from distant lands.
I believe the reason why medieval people wouldn't be impressed by a cellphone is because they had nothing like it back then, so they can't comprehend it (Would probably call it magic). However, they did have spices and some that are even very similar or the same as we use today, they'd be way more impressed by that even though the cellphone is the more technologically advanced item.
@@beardedbjorn5520 wouldn't be suprised if that was the case. Partly because pepper is a lot smaller and lighter than coin, and carting around a pouch filled with metal is kinda triksy. Esspecially when your going off to do some fighting. Would be weighing you down somewhat and thats far from ideal. But leave it back at camp, and chances are someone will try to steal a bit (less of a problem if you have a set of retainers with you). Pouch filled with pepper? Far easier to cart around.
I am so sick (fighting a few viruses, and Hashimoto's synd. etc) and finding gems like these two people, brightens my day, a d distracts a bit from all the pain. Thank you for making these wonderful and edifying videos!!!!👍🌞🤸🏻♀️
I hope you are feeling better now. Back when my family was human trafficking me when was a 12 year old child, they and the pedophiles refused to take me to Medieval Times restaurant/show (medieval-based restaurant with a show of jousting on horseback) because they felt the actors dressed as knights would figure out they were enslaving me and raping me and I would get rescued by a knight and live happily ever after which they did not want. So I went ahead and rescued myself instead and now I'm free to watch people eat medieval food or go myself to a medieval restaurant in Estonia or something :) so I am glad that at least I could see the commercials on TV for medieval times restaurant and dream of being rescued to get enough hope to rescue myself. And jousting looks like a cool sport for me to watch live. :) so I'm still gonna go do that someday. :)
@Shannon Aguilar I am going to suggest functional medicine. Finding a medical doctor that does functional medicine may help you to manage your health so as to add more tools to your armory. It is not a cure but can help.
This is not the first time I’m watching this series, nor will it be the last. Bless this man and the historian lady, this series is my absolute favourite on RU-vid and this channel’s content is what present History channel should try to live up to!
@@breeinatree4811 this reply is a little too late, but Yes! I love Mrs Crocombe and her sassy remarks haha. There's also another similar channel called the townsends which explores 18th century American lifestyle, which is also extremely well done.
Lmfao when he put on that finger wiping cloth over his shoulder, I got a random flashback of the scene where Denethor was eating that cherry tomato - guess my brain low key also thought they looked very alike xD
My dream is to watch a video made by this guy with other medieval experts from other countries on youtube and mix all their knowledge only on a channel so we can understand a general european medieval culture. Think about a Spanish, a German, a British, an Italian and a French talk all together and explain crusades, knights or battles PLEASE DO IT! We need it!
You forgot the Portuguese, have much more culture than the spanish and were way more powerfull than some of the countries you named. Not to mention, Portuguese cousine is one of the richest in the world.
@@bastobasto4866 well the Portuguese were the first to bring capsicum to the southeast asia in the Renaissance, that is the single most important historic event for me as far as food goes
When wheat is contaminated with ergot fungus, removing the fibrous shell of the seeds to make white flour can actually save your life. A lot of medieval peasants were poisoned with ergotism, a condition they called "St. Anthony's Fire". It made you lose fingers and toes over time and quite possibly go mad. White bread was not "unhealthy food" at a time where dietary fibre was more than abundant. It was in fact quite a lot healthier than the risk of contamination from brown flour.
@@HamCubes from Ergot fungus we get Ergometrine which is used when a placenta is retain or a post-natal uterus does not cramp down. Ergot fungus causes hallucinations and miscarriages.
14miki, That's why they soaked the grains. You would soak them with a little bit of acid like vinegar or lemon or whey, and it would take care of the anti-nutrients so all the nutrients in the grain were bio-available. They did this with legumes, also. We should go back to the way our grandma did it. Much healthier eating.
You laugh about checking the urine but I was a med lab tech and I remember (more years than I want to confess to) back when I was in college when we were first studying urinalysis and the various test our instructor told us that so much could be learned just using our senses so not to abandon them totally for the technology. If doing a diabetic their urine could give off fruity smell and while not recommending it of course but would you taste it it would be sweet. and yes we were grossed out but as we learned and progressed we reached a point that on many tests we could tell the most likely outcomes just by what we observed and the tech merely confirmed them.
@14miki oh I know , heck the quickest acid/base testing device is your tongue. I was lucky my MLT instructors also how to do a lot of tests manually as well something I will be forever grateful.
@@annereilley4892 really I never would have guess..I till wouldn't want to be tasting other people's urine let alone if they are sick specially when I have seen what can be living in there. But please by all means, be my guess and have at it.
As a vet tech, our lab teacher started the urology section and she showed how to do a basic exam before testing. She mentioned you could taste it for sweetness and explained about glucose, but no one believed her. Then she took a giant gulp and we all freaked out. She giggled and admitted it was apple juice. Then explained that the taste test is true but there's other more accurate ways to do it
@@diablo2v2 Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh - he grew up in the mean streets of, er, Stratford upon Avon. l'm surprised nobody has punched his lights out.
Yes, but I wonder if foods were classified the same way in each system. Not sure how subtly the medieval system broke down vegetables, for example. Were they all cold and wet? Because in TCM they're not.
theres this thing in chinese that no one can really translate but its this feeling/quality some things have that you need to balance out with its opposite, cuz if you dont, you’ll get a sore throat/sickness, so you eat fruit because you had something fried or spicy
One thing about studying history: your sense of gratitude for the modern world goes up. I give thanks to live in a world where nutmeg is fairly affordable and I can randomly sprinkle it on my milk. (It’s good that way, especially if you microwave your milk first.) Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to put this series together!
These Medieval food videos are so fascinating! Food is such a familiar experience, and to think of how we can relate to the same taste sensations that people so many hundreds of years ago would have experience really brings it to life. At to that all the extra facts of culture, commodities, class and community, it's just all incredibly interesting. It's also highlighted to me just how long bacon consumption has been for us, and how even the idea of novelty and souvenir spoons can be traced all the way back to Medieval royalty, there are so many gems of information packed into these videos. Thank you so much for making them.
I wonder how they found out that the urine would be sweet....were people just drinking each other's urine regularly, and they started to see a trend in the taste or what?
The status of that white bread is underscored by the fact that our modern word "lord" came from the Old English "hlaford," which means "bread keepr" -- hlaf meaning bread but giving us the word "loaf." So truly a status symbol back then.
Cynthia Clampitt possible but don't forget that William 1 changed the language to French and it remained French until the early 1500's. So the root word you are looking for comes from medieval French and not Medieval English.
My French teacher had me research into the transition between the strong castles and the fancier renaissance castles in France. I found a bunch of cool things about food and etiquette and such! One fact is that the French royals considered food close to the earth as the peasant food so they’d eat the food that didn’t touch the ground such as fish, poultry, tree fruits, etc. Peasants may have eaten healthier bc they actually ate veggies haha! Also, I can’t find the time period (maybe 14th century?), but French nobility had a very complicated seating hierarchy tied to social class with different ranks of chairs from thrones and armchairs at the high table all the way down to folding chairs and stools at the long tables.
That the spice box was so valuable makes me think of an interesting D&D heist plot. The PCs break into a lord's manor. Instead of going for their stash of gold or jewels, they'd be angling for the lord's spice box. Complete with needing to get the key off the lady's belt, whether through stealthy pick-pocketing, or the, ahem, "bardic approach".
I belong to the SCA which is a medieval reenactment group, and I have made medieval food. It's rather spicy/savory and interesting tasting to modern taste buds. I made 'pasties' with ground beef, cinnamon (among other seasonings), and raisins one time, and it was really very interesting tasting, but good.
if you look at alot of late medieval/early modern dishes you'll find alot of similar pairings, nutmeg was found in almost everything since the price came down on it to the point that it was widely affordable for special meals. Another strange thing to modern taste buds was the use of oysters and anchovies as a seasoning: they were often either used as a paste for the anchovies or boiled as a stock for the oysters. Oyster gravy and oyster stuffing used to be common all the way up to around WW1 and anchovy paste is still used in some foods today like Worcestershire sauce and some ketchup.
This is aboslutely awesome what is being done in this channel. I'm from Poland where I have my stables and I enjoy long distance horse riding ( recently I have done 600km in 15 days on a horseback including outdoor sleeping ), but I'm also very much in history. I'm passionate about wild food and medieval and pre-medieval methods of cooking, preserving and gathering of foods. Don't ever give up investigating these topics! If you ever came across of a book written by Lukasz Luczaj - the professor of the University here in Poland, do read it. He has learned a lot about wild growing plants (visiting and working in the countryside in China ) the ways of preparing, storing and cooking, but also about outdoor cooking and living. You might find it helpful in your research.
This is what I once believed archaeology was about--people and how they worked alone and together, hunted, gathered, grew, cooked and ate, wore, made and celebrated, perhaps with how and why. But with only an oral tradition (as in North America), I kept being told I was wrong and could't interpret material culture like that, so I took up writing instead. You've given me fresh interest in material culture, thanks!
You & her make such a wonderful team or duo in the whole food series. I would like to see more videos with Chris in them? Lol Your like the experimental taste tester and she is like this medieval chef scientist lady lol.
@Paul Deland The Normans made almost no genetic impact on England, and those who did migrate over were Norman nobility, who were of Scandinavian origin rather than native French. We are Celtic and Germanic, broadly speaking there are no French genes in native Englishmen. Of course the Normans made a large cultural impact on us, but although they spoke French they still culturally had more in common with their nordic ancestors (and by extension the Anglo-Saxons) than the French who were far more influenced by southern Romance cultures.
I'm from Bulgaria, so we know Czech glass or Czech crystal as a very expensive and luxury. Especially the older folks. Because of our common socialistic past and the whole USSR thing, you could find чешки кристал in almost all of our homes. And I'm mightily impressed that it dates back to the medieval times. Respect.
I can't speak for other regions, but the Czech Republic is well-known for glassmaking in the United States. Most of our glass companies were originally founded by immigrants from Bavaria and Bohemia in the 19th century. It's also a big reason why so many American beers tend to be Pilsner or lager style. Many of the beer brewers also came to America from the Czech Republic and Germany. They were easily able to bottle and sell their own beer, due to their mastery of glassmaking.
@@maymay5600 It's named after the Bohemian town (Budějovice) where it was originally brewed. Since the brewery was founded by German citizens, it got the German version of the town's name (Budweis). So basically Budweiser means "from Budweis" or "Budweisian" so to speak.
The sad part is that it's now expensive even in parts of the world where they used to be in abundance and costed very little, it's because they now have to be "exported"!
michael hu It comes from India and slowly migrated to South East Asia and China then later Japan. Not a big leap from India to europe, considering they are much more related than India and east asia.
But you're not actually doing either. The people in medieval times actually lived in them and the people a century from now will actually be in star ships.
This video auto played and I remember watching it originally years ago. It is excellent both you and Chris come across so well in this video. I would watch hours of this. Please keep this kind of content coming!!
I am smitten. When I watched her pull out the rolled bark, (thick, dry, tough) and announce it wasn't Cinnamon, but Cassia.....I became a believer. Cinnamon is diaphanous, paper thin, crumbly, and fabulous. Cassia is none of those things. Carry on!
I recently stumbled upon this channel and one of the things I love most about the videos, besides the information presented, is that you all take the time to credit everyone involved in creating these masterpieces. That is awesome!
This was good stuff, supplemented my SCA knowledge very well. It actually brought to the fore that in SCA we focus on dishes and recipes, but not on how people went about eating - the mechanics of it, like the shoulder towel and not using your left hand, for instance. One thing with this video, I would have liked to see him doing more of the actual eating - cutting the food and using the knife, finding what bits he needs to use a spoon for, etc.
The SCA has some of the greatest feasts anyone will ever eat! I remember the food was so good that it was superior to the finest resturants in Europe or the US. If you're at a SCA feast, you will definitely be eating well that night!😉😄
Actually the 4 humors in medieval medicine were Sanguine (Blood) Choleric (Yellow Bile) Melancholic (Black Bile) and Phlegm. Though the heat cold wet dry properties of these were used to gauge a person's health and mental state.
There was another mistake in the video. The fork was common in the Byzantine Empire as early as the 5th century. It wasn't invented in 13th century Italy.
Definitely. As I read somewhere recently, in these times, peoples waged war for spices; today, they do for oil. I wonder how stupid our current societies will appear to historians in a few hundred years.
"Spoiled" is certainly a weird way to look at it... its called progress... societies in hundreds of years will look at us the same way, thinking "man are we spoiled now compared to those people living in the ancient 2000's with all their cancer, mcdonalds and global warming!" The same way medieval people probably looked back at even earlier societies "Man are we spoiled in our villages and houses living as farmers while people back then had to survive in the wild!" Therefore every future society is more "spoiled" than those living hundreds or thousands years before it...obviously. Thats logical and thats progress -> thats normal.
This program basically shows you how even a working man in living in reasonably well off country in the modern era could be richer than even the most powerful kings of europe back in the medieval era standards of living wise.
@@GalliadII Well the Romans already had a version of that centuries before that period. Actually, aside from flowing water, I would argue true globalisation. After all, think of all the food you are able to eat nowadays relatively cheap: Indian, Chinese, Korean, Arab, Mexican...etc, all within a few hours travelling distance if you live in a big city. Even if you are the King of England, most of what you can eat are sourced locally.
@@tat3179 yes the romans had it, but medieval europeans did not. there was an attitude against all things roman during the middle ages. this did not change until the renaisance began. and yes, I agree. But still this food looks great as well.
@@GalliadII Sure, my point is while flowing water is vital, our true wealth in this generation we are in is the fact that the resources and cultures of the entire planet is within our reach, within reasonable limits of course.
@@tat3179 most of them anyways. ^^ but consider the luxury to be able to flush your toilet. there are people alive today who do not even know what a toilet is. I once heared a story of african refugues who washed potatos in the toilet, because they did not know what it was.
It is very interesting to know that in Medieval time, physicians know properties of food too. I always thought this is only known to Chinese/ Eastern people. 'tis true that I remember when my father donated his blood he cooked a pot of chicken stew with ginseng and dates. I didn't liked that sweet flavoured protein too much but guess that's what a body which is weak (wet and cold ) craves for. It is also why when people catches cold should drink ginger tea because ginger is also is warm in its food property.
Grains of paradise are not pepper. They taste completely different and are in their own specific family. Never buy spices pre-ground. They will only last less than a year but if you buy whole spices and crush or great them yourself in a sealed container they will last forever. I want those glasses! :-)
I have a cook book that was my father's grandmother, 19 the Century, my father always talked about Oxtail Stew, I found a recipe in that book. It took about 8 hours to cook. I made it for him 💔😢a short time before he died, which is a good memory for me!
My mother was still making oxtail soup when I was a kid in the 70s. It was a very economical food as oxtail could be gotten cheaply at the grocery store.
Expensive food in high demand by all: the true reason for imperialism... Seriously, it's funny how most of these BECAME cheap because production was SO profitable that the market became flooded.
I would love to see more peasant dishes. More exploration of the peasant diet. I want to have my own kitchen garden and cook seasonally so seeing the ways that peasants used to do that would be super interesting.
The fact that poorer people often have better meals is true even now. In developing countries like South Asia food is picked, meat slaughtered in the afternoon and sold out by the evening and the household consumes the fresh food on the same day, and fresh food and milk are bought daily, often from the source, unlike a lot of developing countries where food sits on the shelves or fridge for days. No wonder the food tastes so much better even in humble settings. Also crops are grown for flavour and not longevity on the shelves so often the species cultivated have better flavours and the freshness adds to it.
Lentils and rice are cheaper than fast food everywhere in the world. Poor people rely on fast food because they are worked so hard to make enough to pay their bills, they don't have time or energy to cook. This is also why rich banker types tend to eat unhealthy, they don't have time so they eat drive thru fast food for breakfast and lunch.
True, go to any of your local places in Mexico and you can just grab it off the shelf as soon as you walk in along with a variety of different candies (marzipans, Duvalin, paleta payaso, Bandera de coconut) I lived here all my live, kinda of weird to think you can't walk into any place and find all this stuff lol
5 лет назад
Medieval humans: Rich eats greasy unhealthy food and poor eats healthy Modern humans: Rich eats healthy and poor eats grassy unhealthy food.
Wrong! In Modern times, both rich and commoners eat unhealthy food in equal amounts. Rich Classy restaurants don't serve healthy food. They serve good tasting food. Taste is not the same as health. And you don't need a lot of money to eat healthy food cause it's all about simplicity. Just eat natural healthy foods. Don't eat too much meat like the medieval peasants did. Or maybe even go full vegetarian.
These videos truly bring small snippets of the past to life for me, I always have them playing while I'm out in tractor in the paddocks going about my day to day, keep up the good work Jason your videos are absolute class 👌
I keep revisiting these videos, these could be an entire series about food during the middle ages, recreating recorded recipes for lords and ladies across Europe. Big fan of this channel, hope you make a game like Kingdom Come: Deliverance one day, sir.
My Aunt worked fro a Laboratory in the early 1940s until she retired when she was 73. the owner of the laboratory said they would detect sugar in the urine by taste! I still find this amazing.
