Bizarre Foods From the Victorian Era

in modern times we commonly refer to the reign of queen victoria as the victorian era in england that era stretched from the year 1837 until 1901. in the grand scheme of human history it wasn't so long ago in the grand scheme of culinary history it might as well have happened a million years ago on another planet while a number of dishes seemed perfectly normal even today there are a handful of foods that the victorians ate that would not find a welcome home on the menus these days number 10. broxy meat meat has long been a dinner stable for people all over the world victorians enjoyed all kinds of meat fish and poultry from beef to pork to lamb and more they definitely had their carnivorous side but just like today meat wasn't always the cheapest item to buy sometimes if you wanted to have a tasty steak you had to go for a bit lower quality and that was where broxy meat came in if you couldn't afford the good cuts of meat and the average person very likely could not then your local butcher may have had broxy meat at a discount usually sheep though it didn't have to be necessarily broxy meat was the meat of any animal that had died of disease essentially you were taking a gamble by even eating it while not every disease can go from animal to human very easily sheep could be infected with everything from tetanus to ringworm to various parasites and bacteria that would either kill you or make you wish you were dead 9. brown windsor soup brown winsor soup sounds very proper and british even when you have no idea what's in it and this really is a traditional british favorite you can still find it in places today though the recipe has definitely evolved to become more refined in the modern era these days it's made with root vegetables and even a little bit of madeira wine back in the day it was somewhat less fancy the traditional recipe for brown winsor soup involved brown gravy little malt vinegar some peppercorns and a bit of dried fruits like figs or dates and that's it you could add the madeira wine to this brew as well so at least you'd get a buzz off what is essentially gravy and fruit masquerading as a soup number eight sheep trotters you can find hot dog carts all over big cities today but head back to the victorian era and you'd find trotter vendors everywhere sheep trotters were the street food of choice for the victorian crowd genuinely proving to be very popular despite there not being much to them as the name suggests a sheep trotter is just a sheep's foot they were then usually boiled and then you could just gnaw on the greasy grizzly appendage until you cleaned it down to the bone there wasn't very much meat on one of these and there was also the potential that it wasn't very clean either but they were cheap and easy to come by and for that reason you could find hundreds of them in major cities during that time while people in the western hemisphere have more or less abandoned the dish it's still highly popular with some eastern cultures where it is called pyre 7. bloaters bloaters were smoked herring and they were exceptionally popular while smoking heroin isn't that unusual and it's still popular to this day there was a difference between normal smoked herring something like a kipper and a bloater the hint is in the name and it's about how it's prepared bloaters were prepared whole and as is everything was still included in the fish it wasn't gutted or cleaned in any way they got the name bloater because the fish would bloat as it smokes since its guts were still inside and they just started expanding that's traditionally one of the main reasons we gut an animal before preparing it because the gases and fluids in their stomachs and organs can be both volatile and messy the last thing most of us want when we eat a fish is seeing the contents of its digestive tract these fish were popular in greater yarmouth in norfolk and traditionally were made from some of the later catch of the season the early fish were often too small to prepare normally so they could be pickled the fatter fish later in the season that had bulked up were smoked and sold as bloaters and it was generally considered safe to eat them whole they were so popular that people would often buy boxes of them and mail them as gifts to friends and relatives number six pressed duck the name pressed to duck doesn't sound too awful at first but when you get into the logistics of how this dish was prepared it's quite morbid the dish was popular enough that a chef actually invented a duck press to make it better it became a signature dish at le tour de jean in france where apparently over 1 million people dined on this creepy entree before pressing the duck it needed to be killed the preferred method for butchery was strangulation so that you didn't lose any of the blood you let the carcass sit for a day so that everything could settle then you'd gut the bird leaving its liver and heart intact the duck was to be tossed in an oven on the highest setting for about 20 minutes at that point so that the liver and heart will break down this is where pressed duck gets morbid and weird the freshly cooked duck was taken table side along with the press in front of the diners the legs and breast meat were carefully removed and the carcass was put in the press and crushed the blood and marrow would drain out through a spout and collect in a bowl a little bit of liver and stock would be added to the duck juice and you'd have yourself a sauce the duck was then served with the sauce poured over it 5. slink meat if you have an affinity for leather you may have heard of slink leather before it's leather made from the skin of unborn calves and it's about as grisly as it sounds and it's not the only use of slink out there along with proxy meat slink meat was another thing you could find in a butcher's shop if you were on a budget and couldn't afford the decent cuts if a cow was slaughtered for meat and it was found to be pregnant at the time that unborn calf could be butchered and sold as meat they would also sell the meat of miscarried cows or ones born prematurely it's not legal to sell that kind of meat anymore but for the victorians it was a cost-effective alternative to regular cuts number four jelly deals jelly deals isn't a trick name or a dish that's hard to figure out in some way it's precisely what it claims to be a traditional cockney dish it was made by chopping up eels and boiling them in water and vinegar with some spices when you allow the dish to cool it will solidify into a puck of fishy jelly they used to be popular street food sold outside pubs and eating cold as the variety of foods sold on the streets grew jelly deal fell out of fashion this was also because it became harder to find deals during the victorian era it is said that at one point eel was so common in the thames that you could just toss a net in and pull out as many as you could handle by the victorian era though the thames was so polluted that the population had nearly vanished most of the eels that were jellied for victorian diners were actually imported from places like holland that said it's actually becoming popular again but the eels still need to be imported 3. mock turtle soup and brain balls the idea of turtle soup may not be appealing to everyone if for no other reason then turtle is not something we generally eat so would mock turtle soup be better or worse well that comes down to what you think of how the victorians made mock turtle never ones to be wasteful the victorian cooks used anything they could find to make food in the case of block turtle soup all you needed was a cow's head according to one published recipe you needed to scold the head until all the hair was gone then boil it until the horns turn soft at that point you can cut it into slices the size of your finger the remainder of the recipe is fairly standard involving some stock a lot of seasonings a little madeira wine and then chopped brains the brains were formed into balls and you had mock turtle soup and brain balls all made from a cow's head number two foie gras ice cream a few years ago artisanal ice cream really took off and there were a lot of stories online about little shops around the country that would make truly bizarre flavors it started simply with things like bacon ice cream and then expanded to lavender and saffron and sriracha hot sauce you'll even see cooking shows on the food network where a chef will try their hand at making a bizarre flavor of ice cream just to see if it works thank the victorians for being the first to come up with the idea that anything can be ice cream if you tried hard enough foie gras ice cream was a perplexing dish meant to be served in a mold shaped like a duck you would take pre-made ice cream and mix in some cayenne pepper and then line the duck mold with it a layer of aspic jelly was added and then the whole mixture was allowed to freeze before the remainder was packed full of liver pate it wasn't clear if this was a dessert or an entree 1. arsenic complexion wafers these days we understand the dangers of arsenic in fact the only time you tend to hear of it anymore is when it's used as poison for centuries however people have been using arsenic as a health and beauty aid it was often used in skin care to improve the complexion during the victorian era they took this to new levels with arsenic wafers advertised as a way of making your complexion smooth and clear and getting rid of moles and pimples you could buy a box of arsenic wafers and just munch away on the poison whenever you felt like sprucing up your appearance in addition to the benefits for your complexion they were advertised as a way of curing dyspepsia habitual constipation malaria lackluster eyes and even low spirits if you're curious about 1 8 of a teaspoon of arsenic can kill a healthy adult so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up 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Channel: TopTenz

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Id: MFNC7nKLlWw

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020