A Single Spice Blend For Your Entire Kitchen - Kitchen Pepper From 1777

this pork chop is so good this is the best pork chop I have ever had and it's all because of my kitchen pepper this stuff is amazing thanks for joining us today as we savor the flavors in the aromas of the 18th century [Music] as far as I'm concerned kitchen pepper is an important part of any kitchen in the 18th century it starts to pop up in cookbooks in the late 18th century this is Charlotte Mason's cookbook it's one of the first references that you can find 1777 and she gives a recipe for kitchen pepper I believe it's a much earlier concept we just don't see it referenced because it's something that's so common in the kitchens it's a standard spice mix and as you go through rush B's through the 18th century you'll find these same spices showing up over and over and over and all these did recipes so why not just put them all together in a pre-mixed portion and you'll even find later recipes that are used in places like chemist shops or pharmacies or it's almost like a general store would sell this premix of spices so it's a perfect thing to have especially in a situation like this if you're on the frontier you don't have a lot of room for a bunch of spice jars or you're traveling and you want to bring along spice to put on your food but you don't again have a whole lot of space for that so you can bring just one jar just one file of spices and you get all the normal flavors that you're expecting so these eighteenth-century kitchen spice mixes are that ancestor to all those spice mixes you'll find in the grocery store today whether the regional spice mixes or maybe they're for a particular ingredient maybe their meat rubs they all kind of connect back to this kitchen pepper spice mix idea that shows up in these late 18th century cookbooks let me read to you this one out of Charlotte Mason's the lady's assistant this is 1777 this one's simple but I like it it's a really good mix 1 ounce of ginger and then pepper cinnamon cloves and nutmeg 1/2 ounce each and then 6 ounces of salt mix this well keep it dry so she definitely wants that sealed up doesn't get moisture in it she says it's a great addition to all Brown sauces but in later references to these kitchen pepper spice mixes we see them being used in all sorts of situations in meat rubs and in other dishes where you just want to add that normal spice mix that you're used to a wonderful little spice mix let's put this together so let's look at our spices there's a lot to learn here about what's going on in the 18th century what's our base spice that's in this mix well it's salt salt is the least expensive item on the list here so we have that's making up a large portion of it more than half of our mix is salt so we've got a lot of salt in here but the next one that we've got is ginger and here's the ginger we have twice as much ginger as we have the other items now that might be because we want a lot of ginger flavor in here but it's also because ginger is one of the least expensive spices that are coming in in this situation so again we're being economic we're being frugal by having a lot of ginger flavor coming in here and that kind of bulks up our flavor we've got pepper so common along with all these other ones that show up in the recipe books but pepper is right up there with salt almost everyone says salt add pepper so peppers in here we've got nutmeg it's one of the more expensive ones and some of these recipes may be nutmeg is missing because it is so expensive and they'll replace nutmeg with something less expensive called Jamaica pepper or we call it allspice that is another kind of brings in that same aromatic note most of these are not very aromatic but nutmeg is so that one might drop out especially we wanted a less expensive mix or maybe it's just got a little nutmeg that's the other thing about this is that these things are very variable we can adjust this we can customize this mix for ourselves any way we'd like maybe we don't like one of these spices maybe we're not a big fan of cloves so we can drop cloves out add something else or leave it all together so it's very adjustable we're very personalizable and you'll see that happening as we look at different recipes as they go into the 19th century they adjust they get less expensive or maybe some of the flavors drop out because they're not popular anymore something like nutmeg sort of disappears after a while because it's just not as popular and we also have cinnamon and cloves in there all of these are nice and ground up and that's mentioned even the idea that we want to have in some of those later recipes we want to make sure everything is ground and ground finely even before the mix and then they actually mentioned the idea that you want to wait until you make the final one to grate your nutmeg you don't want that graded beforehand because it's it's losing its aromatic flavor now we can adjust these and they might have been adjusted for a lot of different reasons both economic reasons maybe there are cultural reasons so some spices drop out in different cultures maybe your German and you want caraway seeds or something like some of these other spices that are more common in different cultures so we also have some variation from whether it's an expensive mix or whether it's got some you know some different cultural changes in it so there's a lot of variation we can do personally but this one's a nice base mix right there from the late 18th century so here is our kitchen pepper and I am so excited to try this out let's do it now I want to try this out as a rub on some pork chops and see just how it turns out this looks tremendous this is our pork chop rubbed in our kitchen pepper let's find out very spicy and I really love it such a wonderful complex batch of spices and it really comes through each and every one of them kind of hits at different levels if I was gonna make my personal spice mix I would take this maybe add something like a little Cayenne I might double the nutmeg but that's just me but a little Cayenne or something else to give it a top note you know kind of bite right at the beginning but that's the nice part about this we can customize it any way we want I love this whole concept and the ability to just bring all the spices you need right there in one jar I love this whole idea and such a wonderful addition to 18th century cooking this is a great way for you to bring the 18th century directly into your kitchen you don't have to have a special recipe you don't have to try out some something strange out of the cookbooks you can try something like this you can use it almost each and every day if you'd like and it's got so many great complex things going on with it and it brings in flavors from the 18th century that we're not used to maybe in a dish like this we get the cloves and the cinnamon on a meat dish boy that's something completely different isn't it so I love this one and it's so easy for just anyone to do if you would like to see kitchen pepper being used on an 18th century dish try this ribs recipe you'll love it [Music]

Channel: Townsends

Views: 642,758

Rating: 4.9650211 out of 5

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking

Id: ZEu6z3L34v8

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Lance-A-Boyle]

My dad started making a single container spice mixture about 40 years ago for hunting and camping. It was called “The Mixture”. LOL It was salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika. We used it on everything from eggs to fish and steaks.

I’m gonna go make a batch of it right now. Thanks for posting the video.

[u/Ode_to_bees]

I love this guy. The old fried chicken recipe he found is heavenly

[u/ODXT-X74]

Been looking at different stuff to try out when I go back out there. Especially in terms of carrying less stuff. Want to cook something different, something simple.

[u/g-e-e-e]

Read it too quickly as 'prepper'. Oh the confusion

[u/Kalahan7]

His ingredients for those interested.

• 6 table spoons of salt
• 1 table spoon of Ginger
• 1/2 table spoon of peper
• 1/2 table spoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 table spoon of cloves
• 1/2 table spoon of nutmeg

He says he would double the nutmeg (I wouldn't; see edit) and add some cayenne.

I just made it: It's good but boy does it have some kick! Use sparingly. Witch is good when it come to spice you'd bring outdoor. I've then added 1/2 spoon of onion powder and 1/2 of garlic powder. Do recommend. Will bring when camping.

Edit

On further tasting. the added cinnamon is delicious but it's a bit dominating in taste while the other spices seem to blend better together better. I think if you leave the cinnamon as is, you won't get tired of it as quickly and it's a a beter spice that enhancing the flavor of what you're cooking instead of adding new flavor to it. If this is the only spice you bring while camping you want something that only does the first so you won't go tired of the taste.

I would go easy on the cayenne. Instead of 1/2 tablespoon I would stick to a theespoon to make it just a bit less sharp.

He also doesn't specify with salt to use. If you use fine table salt you get more salt for the same volume. Witch is good for your pack size, but to compensate I reduced the number of spoons by 1.

Here's my final recipe.

• 5 table spoons of fine table salt
• 1 table spoon of Ginger
• 1/2 table spoon of peper
• 1/2 table spoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 table spoon of cloves
• 1/2 table spoon of nutmeg
• 1 thee spoon of cayenne
• 1/2 table spoon of garlic powder
• 1/2 table spoon of onion powder.

[u/whiteye65]

Townsends. Some of the best YouTube videos you can watch. The books he reads from and all the stuff he uses he sells. Very useful and entertaining.