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i love the simplicity of this kind of videos. its literally one man, in period clothing, walking in the woods and talking about medieval life. its so endearing!
I appreciate it just because I think cultural details are woefully underappreciated in fantasy RPGs. Take me through an alien food market. Tell me about all seven courses of dinner with the wizard queen. Get me hammered on wine spiked with manticore venom.
@@fainitesbarley2245 Yeah organs, udders, grissle, everything that wouldn't go into a sausage. At one point the combs of roosters were actually a fancy food to go into a pie but I think it would be nasty, steamed in there.
The first stereotype my mind goes to when think about "coarser meat" in the medieval ages is definitely rats, dog, and horse. That's probably not accurate for the majority of places though, so my actual guess might what you would find as cheaper food in food markets in Asia/Africa. Snails, snakes, pig ears, chicken feet, miscellaneous fermented things, etc. are all found in modern day food markets, so I imagine similar cuts but with less seasoning than the modern versions
@@pwnmonkeyisreal Oh they would never admit to the first two and horse was a rare but totally acceptable expensive meat, like beef. They slaughtered animals much later so it will often be less inclined to be tender, an old wilk cow or ox, or sheep. More flavor and fat but takes a longer time cooking and the cheaper cuts certainly would have tendons and grissle.
@@pwnmonkeyisreal I feel like horse would be an uncommon meat, as people were likely not slaughtering horses unless they were old, ill, or had other serious issues. Horses were expensive, working animals, and were probably worth more alive, than dead, for the vast majority of people.
My mom was born in the 30’s. Her family lived in a small apartment in Germany. They had a tiny coal stove for heat. No one has a kitchen. It was a large apartment complex too. She remembered her mom mixing up batter for cakes. She then walked it to the bakers to be cooked. It was the same for bread. My Oma (grandma) would prepare the bread dough at home. Then they took the dough to the baker. I love your telling of history. You paint such a vivid image that I can imagine being there. Thank you
@@danit5146 In India people would do that too for years...... They would make a dough for Nankhathai (Indian Shortbread Cookies) during the festival of Diwali, then thenkuds would be sent to the bakery to bake them. Like wise we even bought, washed and dried wheat and took it to a nearby mill to grind into fresh whole-wheat flour. It make the freshest rotis (flatbread)
I am not a historian, but I am pretty sure decorations on pies started as a way for people to identify their dish. As in, “My pie is the one with the oak leaf.” To this day, I still know which one is Aunt Elizabeth’s.
Regarding the shop fronts, just 30 years ago I moved to King's Lynn and at the bottom (poorer) end of the old main road (Norfolk Street) quite a few shops had no closed frontage but were open to the street (boarded up when closed) and often sold only a single product I.e. there was the Egg man (just sold eggs), the spud shop (just sold potatoes), the cockle man (would sell locally caught shellfish) etc etc. They've all closed since then and been updated over the last 30 years, all the shops now have the usual glass frontage and become "normal" shops. Mindblowing to think practices normal to the medieval age were still quite normal just 20/30 years ago.
@@6400loser Simple. Busy road frontage means more customer eyeballs. More frontage is more eyeball space being taken up where potentially another shop could be. I wouldn't say the real estate structure in today's cities is really all that different. Prime real estate means prime prices and high taxes, it just might not necessarily rely on the width of frontage for the calculation... though it might. Square footage will be a significant factor in today's calculation.
This humble peasant traveled so frickin hard, he found himself a wormhole and traveled in time to our current time, and he's kind enough to give us a first hand account on what life in medieval times looked like. You gotta admire that!
It would probably taste very weird to them. If you get off of junk food for a while, and you try it, it taste different. Like now, when I drink Coca-Cola, I taste dirt. Watch videos of people who try Mountain Dew for the first time. It’s a great example.
@@maryd1495 soda tastes like drinking syurp i hate it especially coca cola i never drank it as a kid and then as a teen it was awful funnily while pregnant it was a craving but now its gross again lol its not that we like it its our bodies love that sugar...its like a drug
That's true. I haven't drank any pop since I was 16 I am now 33 and for the first time yesterday I decided out of curiosity to sip a coke. Oh GOD it was disgusting! I was surprised. I wasn't even a big drinker of pop anyways before though. Yet it never tasted like that I could remember before. I didn't finish it no desire at all for it. It was nasty actually tasted flat even though it was just opened.
My late husband would tell me that when he was a child in Hackney sharing a house with three related families the Sunday roast would be taken to the local cook shop where it would be cooked along with potatoes and rice in the same baking dish and then collected and brought back to the house so that everyone there could partake with the addition of vegetables that had been boiled on the range.
My father told me similar stories from the 1960s. He would often be given a tray full of food and told to go to the bakery so they could bake it. It apparently was a relatively common thing, although I can't say how common house ovens were in 1960s Athens.
I live in Luxembourg on the Moselle river and in the 1940s and 1950s people would take a pot of food to the village baker. He would put it in his oven for a fee and the families would collect it , effectively slow cooked, at the end of the day. Paying for it to be cooked was cheaper than paying for the fuel and watching the oven for hours in case there was a fire.
As for how the cooks knew which pie belonged to which customer who had brought the ingredients: I'm German and both my grandparents from the east of Germany were born in the 19th century. Among what they left we found some little signs of porcelain with pointed ends with their family name engraved and we believe those were used to mark their ownership on breads or stollen (huge German Christmas cakes) they brought to ovens in a shop. Maybe the medieval English citizens had something similar though maybe with some other mark instead of a written name ( not every cook might have been able to read).
There's a nursery rhyme from England Patty cake, patty cake, bakers man, Bake me a cake, as fast as you can, Pat it and prick it and mark it with B And put it in the oven for baby and me. This was how communal ovens worked. You brought your bread or pies to the oven and they were marked with a mark you provided, then given to you when baked in exchange for money.
I always thought prick and mark it with a B meant piercing the surface of the pastry so that the piercings make a B shape, not that they would be sticking some sort of skewer into the bread with a B engraved upon the skewer
Re having a shop cook your food for you, I've done that in Kuwait. You can buy a large fish such as a hamour (rock cod) at the fish market and take it to a bakery. They will spice the fish and then bake it in a tandoor oven for you. Tastes delicious!
@@tedmounsteven621 some restaurants here in Florida will cook your fish you catch fresh the same day. There is one restaurant in the area that will give you unlimited fries too.
@@ryanbales8116 yes! My grandpa loves fishing and used to go catch a fish and take it to a restaurant on the water in Tampa Bay. They would cook it up for you for free with a side like fries or salad, in exchange they keep the amount of fish you don't eat (most people were catching big ocean fish like grouper that you couldn't eat yourself in one sitting). It's a cool system. You get your fish cooked, and the restaurant can sell same-day caught fish to the other patrons without having to rely so much on big fisheries or imports.
I believe that a lot of this is still culturally true around the world. Growing up, I'd spend the occasional summer at my grandparents' house in rural Guatemala, and you'd buy food and drink from vendors selling from carts or bags. Instead of going to a formal restaurant, you might go to a particular house that had converted its front room into an eating space for customers. Instead of going to a videogame arcade, a different house had set up a few gaming consoles in their garage, which had an entry fee just to watch others play, and then an additional fee to pay for a certain amount of time. I believe there were formal road names, but houses and areas were known by distinctive features. My grandparents' house, for example, was at the end of a T intersection and painted orange, so became a local reference point for directions. "Follow this road until you get to the orange house, then take a left, and we're having dinner at the 3rd house on the right" or something like that. It really highlights, maybe, how little day-to-day social interactions have changed beyond material wealth and technology. If you were to drop a medieval person into any major city today, they would probably take a lot of time adjusting. But if you dropped them into my grandparents' town, I think it would have taken very little time for them to adjust.
That sounds more down-to-earth and community-minded than large corporate establishments (which focus on efficiency but at the expense of social quality)
To a degree exists in Southern Italy too. I met for example bakeries that have absolutely no sign on them - unless you look at the door, you won't guess it's not a normal house. But locals know those places and lots of buyers there all time. Same with some stores too.
Detailing the food and drink of a setting really makes a fictional world feel alive. Take your reader or players through a busy city market and you can have them introduced to a lot of your world in a quick and organic way.
This is what makes D&D cookbooks so fun. They make settings seem more alive when you have an idea of what the foods are, and can even make a version IRL.
There’s an old nursery rhyme… “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. Prick it and pat it and mark it with ‘B’, and put it in the oven for baby and me.” Might be a clue as to who the pies were baked for 😊
This nursery rhyme is from a time when people wouldn't have bake ovens in their homes so they would take their pies/breads etc. to the town bake shop. They would bake it for you, marked with your initial so they knew who had what.
When I went to Cairo a few years ago, I visited a Baker who received all his neighbours loaves for baking each day and was paid a small amount for doing so. I believe each loaf had a small mark or was fashioned slightly differently indicating who it belonged to.
Communal ovens have been a thing wherever bread is baked since urbanization began. Ovens are large. Require significant amount of work to built. A _lot_ of fuel and are a serious fire hazard; the Great Fire of London is believed to have started in a bakery.
I like that you have no qualms about interjecting comments about fantasy setting scenarios alongside the history facts. Makes the whole presentation less "stuffy" and overall pleasantly nerdy. 🙂
@@EggnogTheNogomg SAME!!! that's so funny, that's even why I clicked the video because yeah... Doesnt get much fast-foodier than that! Quick, check. Cheap, check. Food sits out for extended periods, definitely check. Lol
I can answer the question of how someone would know which pie was theirs at a bake shop. Apparently every family had a distinctive design that would be pricked into the top crust. I learned this from a friend who uses her family’s design on pies to this very day. It’s been handed down from mother/aunt to daughter since at least Victorian times.
Jason first I want to say I love these videos and I am always excited when they come out. You're also well known for your successful video game company and I would absolutely love to see you go into the medieval genre. Your interest and dedication to history would make it absolutely incredible in a video game
I can totally see Jason coming up with a Kingdom Come: Deliverance style game set in England. Maybe... the late Viking/ early Norman period. Aghh... a man can dream !😌
I reckon people physically interacted a lot more back in the middle ages. If you have to walk to the cookshop, the baker and the alehouse to get a decent dinner then you are going to meet a lot more neighbours than ordering a meal online or going to a supermarket self-checkout.
In many parts of the world, people still live like this. My husband walks to the bakery every day for our bread. He also frequents the fruit and vegetable stands. Our meats are delivered. We travel an hour down our mountain, once a month, for bulk goods.
@@marionky Apparently a lot of places in Europe people still only use a fridge for storing holiday foods, day to day they probably don't have enough food to justify turning it on as they go to the shops every day. One friend lived in a house i Amsterdam for 6 months, he couldn't get a fridge if he wanted to, but he was also between a bakery and grocery and across from a restaurant.
Eh, it’s really only the last few decades where this kind of social interaction has been destroyed in the west, and it’s turning everyone into socially awkward weirdos.
@@littlekong7685 Im European (Norwegian) and not having a fridge sounds straight up absurd to me. But perhaps further south on the continent, in big cities, having an empty fridge is a realistic option? I dont know why anyone would want to do that though...
@9:05 because I am a cook. How were the pot pies labeled for their "owner" while the dough is still tender you can scribe the initials of the person on it, so after browning from cooking it would be big and easy to read........
It's interesting to see this and compare it with the "fast food" of Ancient Rome, particularly the similarities and differences. In Rome a lot of the fast food locations were built into the fronts of the apartments where people lived and tended to be big enough that people could come inside and buy, with counters that had heated pots built into them, almost like a modern deli.
I cherish this channel so much. Nobody understands day-to-day medieval life better than Jason. Even after years of watching your channel you still manage to transport me back in time to a bustling, lively, energetic marketplace. Heartfelt thanks to you, sir
Simple Simon met a "Pie Man" going to the fair. The verses used today are the first of a longer chapbook history first published in 1764.[1] The character of Simple Simon may have been in circulation much longer, possibly through an Elizabethan chapbook
Fascinating stuff, I was born and raised in Windsor, and the main shopping street that leads up to the Castle gates is called Peascod Street and there are pea plants carved into the font in the Parish Church in Clewer Village.
5:59 I’m thinking the coarser cut would be from old animals, that is, animals kept and fed for some other purpose than being eaten, such as producing milk, wool or offspring. After a few years, the animal gets too old to do that properly, and so it’s butchered as cheap low-grade meat, sold to people who can’t afford meat from younger animals.
I am with you. And do not forget all the draft animals that where around then. There would have been comparable large amounts of meat too tough to eat when not cooked to death.
@@NoSacredCowFlathat’s kinda what I was thinking. Probably organ meat or parts of the animal that today would probably get ground up and repurposed into something more appetizing or turned into dog food
Regarding the narrow shop frontages the shop fronts of Cirencester old town are all in multiples of 22 feet (11ft, 22ft, 33ft and 44ft) as the Roman layout was with 22ft shop fronts. There was very little change in the property boundaries outside of these measurements for nearly 2,000 years, possibly why we see very narrow shop fronts in old market squares and such. So many layers of history.
I could imagine someone with a few coins in their pocket sitting down in a tavern to get their cup of wine and sending runners ala medieval uber to go fetch bread and meat from nearby cookshops. I would also imagine places like taverns and alehouses which wanted people to linger, and drink more, quickly getting the idea to serve some food as well, as we can see in many different cultures, though tapas jumps to mind.
I can imagine sitting there with a stomach full of weak ale like “you’re telling me I have to go walk to get some food?” “Alright” Sloshes away to pass out elsewhere
I guess the taverns have cross promotions with nearby cookshops and stuff. So you can order meat from Cookshop X and pies from Bakery Y and eat them while drinking in Tavern Z, and these places will send their own boys with the food.
Yes, every pub landlord in England knows to serve salty food to keep the punters thirsty! It seems likely that alehouses would have had deals with local cookshops to share customers and drive business to eachother's establishments. I do wonder what bar snacks were common back then though if you weren't hungry enough for a full pie...
Other than onion and mustard, at the right time of year there would be Ramsons (wild garlic) and for a longer period of the year there would be Jack By The Hedge (wild garlic mustard). Stinging nettles were probably used too as a vegetable (I've had stinging nettles in a stew and they taste very good). I'm sure there were all sorts of common edible plants used like Sorrel, dandelion and wild mint like horse mint etc
Nettle is also a popular freshness preserver. I remember the days when meat was transported wrapped in a thick layer of nettles to keep it from spoiling.
@@peterknutsen3070 I don't know, why. Maybe it has to do with the bactericidal effect of nettle leaves - in any case, it has been used for centuries and it works.
@@mindstalk I was thinking of including horseradish but it seems that it probably came here in the later medieval period or at least that is what is thought. But who knows, it might have been here much earlier. I mean its possible that the Romans could have introduced it to Britain. Our earlier history is like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces that are missing. Only so much written information has survived the journey of time.
Watched this fast food video again. Only Jason, the Modern Knight, could make pie shops so interesting and real. Think I'll take my virtual pie from this video to the Ale house video for a virtual tipple to wash it down. 😊
@@VintageExplorer666 He's definitely Sir Jason to us MHTV fans. But he has explained that although CBE is a level of Chivalry, he isn't actually a "Sir" at this level. One level more and he will be. Fingers crossed HM the King promotes him soon.
@@VintageExplorer666 I think he deserves it as historian, presenter and CEO of a successful entertainment empire among other things. Hopefully he will get that next level of recognition. In the meantime, we can continue to enjoy MHTV. Good viewing to you.
I have been enjoying your "medieval food" ever since I first saw the "Medieval food: How healthy was it?" and it's related videos ;-) They also bring back memories of reading David Eddings books where food pops up in several instances like finding an abandoned house with an intact kitchen, good times.
Thanks to channels like this and Tasting History, my RPG city has things like a Butter Pie house (open 24 hrs) public houses, taverns and separate inns. The lower end inns serve gruel for breakfast and pottages for dinner and have communal sleeping quarters. Thank you for all you do to add a bit of realism and character to my RPG world for me and my friends. Grab your ketchup and crunch away my friends.
What a great video on so many levels! Brought back some memories. First trip to Ireland & the UK in 1983, Return of the Jedi had just been released. I'm a big fan & saw it at home and then in Dublin, Edinburgh & London. Was amazed at the ice cream vendors at intermission and the bars in the lobbies. We could buy popcorn & sodas in theaters the US then, but not ice cream & booze. 😊
I always love seeing an upload on this channel. I too like the idea of an adventurer coming into town and planning out the cook shop, bakery, and tavern they will visit for the meal. Also, the hucksters shouting out "hot pies! hot pies! Geese! Piglets! Come dine! Come dine!" with trays of prepped food.
Thank you kindly. My 2 kids and I watch on the TV after dinner. We all learn something, are entertained, and are not rotting our brains, so thank you for your hard work!
This is a great channel. Been watching for 5 years. It's kinda sad when he shows the medieval period ending with gunshots. No armor could stop a musket ball
Jason, thank you. Whenever I'm curious about a specific historical way of life or event I look it up, but the answers I get are usually quite vague, and leave me wanting to know more of the details. You, bring history to me, and include the tiny details that I seek. Again, thank you. EDIT TO ADD: Perhaps, if you have time, maybe do a video about all the strange little 'objects' people would build into in the walls/thresholds of their huts/homes to ward off evil spirits. Obviously, superstition was a huge part of daily life back then, so maybe you'll have the opportunity to produce a 'mini-series' regarding their superstitions?
How well-timed! I was musing on medieval street snacks for use in a fictional-fantasy setting, and settled on roasted chestnuts. I guessed mainly based on personal experience, but it made me really curious about it in general! Thanks for the "taste" of historical quick bites :D
Cheap bread with salted butter or farmers cheese, local berries served in a broad leaf (fresh or dried/preserved), small roast fish from the nearest river (stuffed with herbs), crispy pork fat (cracklings. The leftovers from rendering lard), small cakes (think cookie size but soft and sugary bread), boiled salted potatoes (maybe cut in half with a hunk of bacon shoved in), roasted rabbit (two legs per order then any other meat sold on in a hollowed out bun/between two slices of bread soaked with drippings), roasted nuts still in their shells (great for keeping warm in winter), small pies, roast meat on sticks. I feel like peas sold as a bunch of fresh pods would also be an option - easy to pop out snd snack on then dump the pod anywhere to compost.
Up through the 1950s small villages in Italy (and probably throughout Europe) had a central bake oven for making bread. From early in the morning until after dark, on a rotating schedule, Housewives would bring their week's worth of bread to be baked in the communal oven all week long. Often covered pots of soup or small roasts and vegetables were tucked into the corners to cook all day so Italian housewives could do more than just watch a pot.
A couple of thoughts come to mind... I imagine the difference between penny pies and tuppence pies was one of size but there would have been a temptation to put lower quality ingredients in a penny pie and the law said the filling had to be the same. On the other hand, given that they couldn't cut corners, pie makers might have felt the profit margin on penny pies was too small. The other is that putting your kitchen in the front of the shop, while actually less sanitary, was good advertising. In a world with minimal health standards, it's not a bad thing to have full disclosure of what's going on in your kitchen.
You say minimal health standards, but I feel that is perpetuating the myth of an unclean medieval society, just a bit. Contrary to popular belief, people did bathe, did care about their hygiene and looks--and given there were laws to ensure the food was safe to eat (such as not reheating meat), I think it shows a better understanding of food spoilage and hygiene than we give the medieval folk credit for. It's pretty neat to see that they cared so much to enact laws and fines like that.
@@shawnwolf5961 I have to agree there. I think the frontage was a better idea for the sake of honesty more than anything. You can see the amount of filling going in, you can see they are using piglets and not old mares, the vegetables look fresh and not wilted. Plus the smell of cooking food is not to be underestimated, a hungry patron walks by and smells your food from the kitchen might decide then and there to stop and eat. And then it becomes far less likely the local inspector might take an interest in you, unlike the folks making food in a back area and only bringing out sealed foods.
@@shawnwolf5961 I think it might be more a question of enforcement. From what I understand, Medieval governments had less of an administrative state and less law enforcement. Identified violations would likely be prosecuted, but there would be less proactive enforcement. In that situation, allowing the public to observe the kitchen is more valuable.
@@littlekong7685 In the '90s, I was a 'baker' at a cafe-bakery chain, where all the baking and prep was done front-and-centre behind the counter. Aside from near the cloud of cinnamon around the Doughnut King, the smell of our bread and pastries filled the Food Court. People used to wait for the latest batch of baguettes to come out of the oven so their salad roll could be hot and fresh (and wilted), rather than one of the cold baguettes that had been sitting there for 15 minutes. Now that I've given Doughnut King more than three seconds thought, every doughnut shop ever does exactly the same thing.
I would think it's the opposite actually: the smaller pies won't use much meat and are more affordable, ideal for bringing in clients, so makes sense to use good quality meat. The larger pies consume more meat, but that means it's easier to mix in meats of lower quality without it being noticed Idk about medieval times but this certainly happens in modern times
@@CrimsonSurvival actually there were Inns, Taverns and Ale houses and the term bakery didn't come into use until much later on. Inns often provided accommodation, food and drink. Taverns drink and usually food and Ale houses could literally just be someones house that sold excess ale that they had brewed and it didn't keep very long before hops came into use so they sold the surplus, often people hung a broom or something similar above their door to let people know there was ale for sale.
I love this guy. He's like me when I'm telling my girlfriend everything I just learned about ancient Rome. So glad that he gets to share this with us, and that he gets to live a life where he can explore it.
I think medieval towns or cities were extremely social and busy. You had to visit 10 different spots to get ingredients for dinner and walk quite a distance at times to go about your business. Even if it was a big market with all you needed you'd stop at every stand and discuss current local affairs and gossip. It was exactly what my gran used to do not more than 40 years ago so why would it be any different back then.
Jason, just a thought but pigs trotters, which are the feet, have been popular right up until recent times. I know my parents used to eat them quite frequently in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Sheep trotters wouldnt be much different except maybe a little smaller. Also you could think of it like a lower shank, the lamb shank is now really common but i can remember it being thought of as poor peoples food in the late 70s early 80s BTW you are one of my fav channels on RU-vid, love the effort and research you put in and its always interesting topics 😄
I'm an immigrant to Extremedura, in Spain, and most of my neighbours still eat pig's trotters. They eat the ears and tail too - everything except the squeak, they say. We're very proud of our acorn fed pork here. (I was invited to eat tail - a special meal. It was very tasty, not as gelatinous with cartilage as oxtail.)
Lamb shanks -used- to be cheap, until a few cooking shows told everyone they were fashionable. Now they are ridiculously expensive for the amount of meat you get vs the amount of bone since they are now sold by weight instead of by the piece. Something I came across a few months ago is 'pig wings', a US centric snack made from the smaller trotter of the pig well trimmed & eaten at 'Tailgate BBQ's' and the like. In Australia I see them in some supermarket butchers at 1/3 the price of any meat, even chicken drumsticks & wings (something else that has gotten ridiculously expensive once it was declared fashionable).
Roman cities had many 'fast food' shops and today we eat from one end of a street market to the other. People are people no matter the era, and where there is a need, someone will start making and selling it.
In South Asia communal oven shops still exist, they use a sequential cooking system to differentiate who brought which loaf to be baked. Perhaps something similiar was used in Medieval Europe.
How this channel doesn't have more than 1M subscribers yet? Not trying to be a drama queen here, but it just says a alot about the world we're living in.
Thank you Jason for these videos. Your genuine passion and excitement is contagious and I find myself frequently smiling and laughing along with you whenever I watch them.
Great film! Very much interesting information, I suppose RPG players and larpers will be very grateful to you for it. The city is mostly a lot of people who need to be fed, and not everyone can afford to have their own kitchen. I lived for many years in Krakow, a city where there was a medieval university - the city and university chronicles speak of particularly many places where ready-made food was sold. There was also a system of feeding poor students linked to charity - every poor student had a pot and a spoon and at lunchtime they could come to a burgher's house and count on the cook to give them something. This was a very popular kind of charity, for which the Krakovian bourgeoisie was probably forgiven many sins 😃
@@glittertechnic I don't think it had a special name, but I could be wrong. Perhaps there is some "pascere pauperes alumni" preserved in the chronicles ("to feed poor students" in Latin) 😃, but I have not come across any particular name.
I find the everyday lives of people of the past so interesting because I think its the hardest to visualize sometimes. We have plenty of remains of castles, big important buildings where rituals took place, and of course monuments commissioned by royalty like statues, halls, and great buildings. Yet, the towns that history didn't talk about too much, simple cottages, the local pubs/taverns, and streets; those are all gone. We don't have anything left except those people who spend years to recreate them as best as best as they can. We do have historical sites but it's always interesting to me, how little is truly left. Whenever I play video games, there are those where the developers spend years pouring over how to recreate certain points in history as best as they can. Those games I especially love when they let you just walk around and get even a tiny idea of what it was like.
The Crowner John book series (set in ca 1290 Exeter) often has the main characters stopping at stalls to buy various “fast food”. Getting someone else to bake your pies is also a good way to reduce the risk of burning your kitchen (or house) down.
The other day I was reading about the ancient Roman grain dole, wondering how that worked when tenement dwellers didn't have cooking facilities. Wiki said you would take your grain to a baker, for milling and baking.
@@mindstalk I think there was a parallel in medieval times where even if you grew the grain, you still had to have it milled by your lord, mostly so the lord could get income from you in the form of a part of the flour for their own use. And according to this video, if you didn’t have the facilities, a baker would have to bake the bread or whatever for you too. I wonder what the charge was for that service?
I used to have an older colleague in the 1970s whose father had been a baker in Sheffield, England. He told me that people would come with food to be cooked in his ovens, presumably after the bread had been baked, because few had their own oven.
Love watching your videos. I have a theory on what "courser meat" could suggest. This is a stretch but I was just watching a video on the Townsends channel (which discusses colonial history) and they had a video about the rations a prisoner might receive. They reference a historical document (a ledger of rations) provided to a prison in I think it was Philadelphia. That document also makes reference to course meat. It references "Sunday - one pound of course meat made into a broth". I suspect between these are referring to roughly the same thing and that it may be a slang term for the poorer cuts of meat or even perhaps the umbrals (though that has a specific term) which they might have ground and stewed to make a rich broth which would be inexpensive and nourishing. I think the term "course" in this context refers to any meat that is unsuitable for whole cooking and serving and they would be making a broth out of it. The video also references a second document about how prisoners are often fed ox hearts and ox head so perhaps it is a reference to the same thing in this medieval context.
… perhaps the “umbrals” … even my spell check never heard that one. … 🔦... “Umbral is derived from the Latin umbra, meaning "shadow". It is also the Spanish and Portuguese word for "threshold", and sometimes used as a surname ....” Sweet word. Thanks.
@@robkunkel8833 I heard another video on modern history that referred to it as a word for the guts of an animal which I think would be ground up and made into a pie
Not a native English speaker here; I understood it as coarse, not "course", so I gathered it to be leftovers of this and that, a sort of stew of different undistinguished bits (hence coarse); or, alternatively, entrails.
Hey man how ya doing? I been watching for about a year now and just wanted to say thank you for the hard work you put into these videos. I never fail to learn something as well as be entertained! You’ve sparked an interest which has evolved into a fascination into lives in the past. It’s funny because I find myself questioning how I can find a way to connect ourselves with the people of the past. As I’ve come to think, we are much more alike to those that came before us than we realize. All that has really changed is the “routes” we use to achieve the same feelings. I appreciate the videos and am always excited for a new one!
Excellent stuff Jason! Videos like this that offer "slice of life" topics are endlessly interesting. I wish you'd been around 40 years ago when my D&D group was in full swing, knowledge like this would have made our campaigns so much more realistic. I had an old herb book and drove the DM nuts with always asking about comfrey/woundwort and other healing herbs that my Ranger carried around with him. There have always been tales of shady cooks using dyes/plaster/sawdust and other nefarious means to "spruce up" their products and get higher prices for them. "Cheap" seasonings are amazing, there is so much that can be done with just salt/pepper and a few herbs, some of the best meals I ever ate were made up from whatever we scrounged while deployed in the field in the Army. A snared rabbit, chives, wild garlic, dandelions and the salt/pepper packs from our MREs made an amazing Hasenpfeffer that I still remember fondly.
Oh when I worked in retail as a teen people would still say a store was shuttered if it was closed, glass entry door no shutters in sight. I had one manager that would say it was time to shutter up when it was time to close. This was on the East Coast US in the 1970s. Now it makes sense. Thank you!
As always, top-notch information presented beautifully. I still say, these videos should be shown in schools... :) Side note: So, 'fast food' was readily available, and of possibly questionable quality? 'And there is no new thing under the Sun'...
Thank you so much for an easily understood explanation of medieval fast food. I am an 80 year old widow, and my ears don’t hear as well, nor does my brain assimilate information as quickly as even just 10 years ago. Thanks again. I hope to be attending my first REN Festival, in Texas, this fall, and am immersing myself in the times as much as I can. Thank goodness for the internet! (Although, “Goodness had nothing to do with it,” as Mae West said.)
Thanks for creating this channel. It’s so interesting. It’s a surprisingly lesser covered topic. For example, I can understand the daily routine of a middle class Victorian Londoner thanks to the books I’ve read. Same with the Georgian era. But I had no idea medieval peasants actually had such busy and interesting lives. They don’t seem as far away from us as I once thought. Just subscribed!
Love this channel, always so interesting. Also, love the delivery. Nothing too flashy, lovely locations. I feel like im listening to a favorite teacher in high school. Keep up the great work sir!
When I was a young teen, I asked my history teacher if we could learn more about the daily lives of the people in the periods we were studying. He said no. As far as my school was concerned, history was memorizing the names of leaders, and the locations and dates of battles, with minimal context. Videos like this relight that desire to understand life in the past. I wish videos like this formed a bigger part of history education. Maybe then there wouldn't be so many people who are made to think history is boring when it's not.
This channel and it's videos are among the highest quality on all of RU-vid. Thank you to Jason and everyone else involved with this fantastic content. I'm always thrilled when a new video is released! Cheers.
The notion of fantasy fast food (with its modern twists) and your mention of hucksters makes me think of "Cut Me Own Throat" Dibbler from the Discworld novels, and his infamous sausage on a bun business - one of my favourite food vendors in fiction!
This was so interesting! This channel continues to be one of my favorites on YT, you should be granted support from the state for doing a public service of excellent quality!
Pat it and prick it and mark it with B. The nursery rhyme says that you took your loaves and cakes to the baker where they did a final shaping, slashing the crust and putting an initial on it labeling it for the customer.
I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy day as a peasant to learn how to use a time machine and a computer in order to teach us future people about your time.
That was so interesting! I don’t dabble much in medieval history, but when something pops up, it’s always fascinating to me that over centuries & millennia, human nature and creature comforts don’t change much! 😂. Thanks for the great video!
Hot cross buns were a thing in the medieval period! The song sounds like someone hawking their wares. There are lots of places with busy market streets that probably sound quite similar to the ones back then. In the end, one of the most effective ways to get people to check out your goods hasn't really changed. 😁
