Disgusting Recipes We Won't Try - Q&A

we've got some great questions today the main one is on disgusting foods of the 18th century thanks for joining us today on questions and answers with James Townsend and son you I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a holiday season we still got a little bit of that left but thank you for all your wonderful wishes for that here is the first question today this one was from Monday's video the Pease pudding I have an old 600 thread-count bed sheet I think that will work good any thoughts so obviously he's talking about using this sheet for a pudding bag yes muslin a 600 count muslin is very fine that should work for a pudding bag very very well here is a question from the Switch old video that we did several years ago it says my wife and I just love your videos you mentioned using honey in the switch already but for sweetening in other recipes you mentioned sugar or molasses much more often was honey not used quite as much in the 18th century on a related topic I wonder why we don't hear more about Mead honey wine or beer from this period I have found Mead much easier to make them beer honey is definitely used in this time period and in fact Mead was a very popular drink in the 18th century it was more popular in a 16th and 17th century but still it's a popular thing you see me dress appease in the cookbooks very very often and Mead related topics so honey isn't something that is disappearing in the 18th century it's just not typically used in the in the cookbooks or specifically as a sweetener probably because molasses and sugar was much less expensive so they wouldn't use honey unless they were trying to actually get a honey flavor so you'll find honey being used in Mead recipes and you'll find honey being used in specific recipes where they're looking for that honey flavor something like the little honey cakes that we've done in the past before but obviously in this circumstance since honey was more expensive they're going to be using sugar as a typical sweetener that's probably why you're not seeing it as much in the cookbooks here's an interesting one it says occasionally I get coal and ash in my stew when I lift the lid I think it adds some flavor what do you think well I think that food cooked over an open fire in this case he was he was he was commenting on the roast beef episode that you do it in the Dutch oven and it seems that anytime we cook items out in the kitchen or open over an open fire you really get a different flavor that smoke comes in there and it definitely enhances and changes the flavors sometimes for the better sometimes it might make things seem like they all taste the same and I think that's one of the reasons why you see different kinds of flavorings going on in 18th century cooking when they're trying to bring out some of these other flavors that might be overcome by the smoke or other flavors that get into your food specifically I think it's one of the reasons why you see orange flower water and rose water used in some recipes I think some of that is to counteract that smoky flavor and here's the main question today it's from Joey the Priuses he says are there any really disgusting things that you've seen in the 18th century cookbooks that you'll never try in a video well I don't know if I'm going to say never but let's just say the reason why we haven't done these things earlier is because they don't sound very appetizing ok so here are some really good ones to hash a calf's head or to cook a calf's head in imitation of turtle soup that seems to be a common one somehow I can't get over that idea that doesn't sound too good to me several recipes for cow udder that's not something that that we eat typically today at least in this area to make a ragu of pig's ears again not not so good now this one some people are going to say this is probably great roasted eel we can't even get you around here but somehow roasted eel sounds distasteful a fricassee of ox palates many different parts of the the animal are used in 18th century cooking that we just don't even hear of today I we can't even find ox pal but still doesn't sound great here's one that doesn't sound disgusting but most people wouldn't cook it this way to roast lobsters they tied lobsters to a rotisserie spit and they would roast them over the fire sounds interesting how to recover venison when it stinks there are many recipes that you'll find that you'll run into in the cookbooks about recovering foods that have been that have gone off sometimes you know like how to recover your stinking beer something it's that's that's gone bad we would just throw it out there's a recipe for Skua --tz-- and it starts with cutting veal sweetbreads into pieces you don't even want to know about sweetbreads and something you'll find referenced many times in the cookbooks cockscombs where they actually cooked with the comb of a chicken you'll find lots of recipes for small birds they they cooked every kind of bird possible if you could catch it they cooked it we wouldn't do that today here's a good one right out of the cookbook so I'll read it to you stitch water take a gallon of new Ale wort and put to it as much stone horse dung as will make it pretty thick add to this a pound of London treacle to Penny's worth of ginger sliced six pennies worth of saffron mix these together and distill off in a cold still take three or four spoonfuls at a time I am not sure what they mean by still a stone horse dung but I don't think I want to know now the recipes for food are bad enough if you really want to get into kind of the disgusting ones you go and you look in the medical books and I'm thinking stitch water even though it's in with the other kind of foods drinks I think it's obviously medicine by the way they talked about how much to take here's another one sounds great doesn't it hog lai swine take hog lice a half a pound and put them into two pounds of white port wine and after some days of infusion strain and press out very hard and then it keeps on going where about huh guys right now hog lice actually don't have anything to do with hogs they mean those little roly-poly bugs that you find underneath the logs so you take you take a half a pound of these little bugs and you mix them with port wine and you kind of let it infuse for a few days sounds sounds great doesn't it and here's the last question I love the dishes in your videos are they available somewhere I can purchase Thanks almost all the items you see in our cooking videos whether it's clothing that we're wearing or the dishes or the cooking equipment all these things are available in our print catalog and on our website and I will make a list a specialist including these new plates but of the top ten kind of dishes and plates that we that we sell on our website so that you can take a look at them so I'll put it down in the description section you can check that out I know we get so many comments about people being so thankful for the content that we put out and they want to support us and you can support us by going to our website purchasing products like like the plates you can also support us on patreon and I want to thank everyone who has supported us on patreon so far that is a great encouragement and if you want to help support us that way that will be great I'll put a link down to the patreon Monday again is a holiday for us here at James Townsend and son and so we won't be here to put out the video on Monday but we will have a cooking video available for you on Tuesday so make sure to stay tuned for that again I want to thank everyone for your well wishes for the holidays that we got so many in and the comments on that the the three reasons why you watch video that video has I don't know how many comments on it now I'm still reading every comment that comes in and every one is amazing so I want to thank you for your amazing support I hope you have a wonderful new year coming up and thank you so much for watching [Music]

Channel: Townsends

Views: 542,632

Rating: 4.9317937 out of 5

Keywords: recipe, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century cooking, jon townsend, jas townsend and son Q&A, honey, switchel

Id: ytK0omplQPU

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2016