Doing Much With Very Little

there is a great problem with people being put out of work because of the industrial revolution all kinds of industries are collapsing driving people out of the country into the cities to get whatever jobs they can that is not working well for families it's not working well for society in general even in north america welcome to this very special episode of 18th century cooking today we're going to be talking about the poor and how to feed the poor in this time period of the 18th century and specifically the 1790s and about 1800 in this time period there is a real problem with supplying just normal people with bread there's a crop failure in the late 1790s in great britain and there's a great problem with feeding just everyday common people on the street there are bred riots there are all sorts of things and there's a desire within all of the society to fix this problem and many people wrote about it we have this wonderful little piece from hannah moore and she writes this small little pamphlety book called the cottage cook so ryan's been cooking up this soup out of this book let me read to you the recipe so you think that this book is actually a cookbook now it does have recipes in it but it's only got like four recipes and they're all almost the same thing let me read to you recipe number three that's the one we're making today take two pounds of salt beef or pork cut it into very small bits and put it into a pot with six quarts of water and let it boil on a slow fire for three quarters of an hour and then put a few carrots parsnips or turnips all cut small or a few potatoes sliced a cabbage or a couple of cresses thicken the hole with a pint of oatmeal all of these to be well seasoned with salt and pepper the other recipes are actually almost exactly the same thing in this cookbook and this type of recipe is mentioned over and over in this time period why there's no bread in this there's no grain that needs to be you know given to this particular situation the poor in the late 18th century they survived on bread and small beer that's it and there was this since wheat was so expensive they had to come up with other means and these people in the upper parts of society said how can we help the poor people eat how can we give them different options for eating bread there were other options for bread specifically and they talked about these in a time period making bread with other things than wheat making bread with war eye making bread with oats or barley or even peas and beans making bread that was not very good um very very well even distasteful and the common people rejected that bread they did not want to eat it they wanted to eat white bread so let's set the stage for what's happening in the late 18th century in great britain there is a great problem with the industrial revolution is basically coming into this time period and a lot of people are being thrown out of work a lot of cottage industries like weaving and spinning are being taken up by machines and people are leaving the countryside and they are going to the cities and it's a there's a great increase in low-income people in these urban situations and then we have on top of that all these crop failures and other problems so there's there's a there's a great amount of stress on lower income people here in great britain and even in north america in this time period there's also a great desire to have people not cook their food the wrong way so even during the revolutionary war and in this time period there's a desire that if people get meat they should not roast it they shouldn't fry it on the fire but in fact make soup with it because it's the most efficient way to get the the most nutrition out of a piece of meat so this is from uh the soldier's friend and this is a little pamphlet right here from the time period 1798 and it's for officers to help their their military soldiers under their command eat properly and many other things he says nothing is so agreeable and at the same time so wholesome to a soldier after a fatiguing and perhaps a wet march as some warm soup to boil the meat is therefore the mode of cooking which ought to be the most generally used in the army there's even almost commands from the upper parts of the military down to the lower officers telling them to not let their soldiers fry the meat that you should only give them the equipment so that they can boil the meat or they can make soups and stews because it's the most efficient way to feed these soldiers in this late 18th century time period there's also the creation of soup kitchens or as they call them in this book soup shops that are popping up in london and they they want to be able to feed poor people they don't necessarily give away the soup they charge a small amount for it and the amount that they isn't covered by what they're charged is actually covered by a subscription by other people in that community but they're reaching out they want to feed as many people as possible we've got this wonderful recipe for this soup kitchen in birmingham this is out outside of london obviously 80 pounds of beef shoulder bosom sticking pieces with three ox's melts or lungs given in by the butchers and weighing about 16 pounds so something like 96 pounds of meat also four legs of beef weighing 34 pounds three ox cheeks weighing 27 pounds and then added to that 37 quarts of white peas 21 pounds of onions 48 pounds of ground rice 12 pounds of salt 6 ounces of black pepper 2 ounces of ground ginger and just a half ounce of cayenne pepper also mint celery carrots or leeks are often given as presents to sort of fill out this now they would make these huge batches this batch here would make 160 gallons of soup and they they go through and give you exactly what it would cost to make this 160 pounds or 160 gallons of soup i i even a recipe like this isn't interesting that in 160 gallons they still put in the spices like a half ounce of cayenne they want these they still want there to be some flavor in this basically very inexpensive watery soup and they would sell or somebody would sort of buy a subscription to this for a small amount each week each day they could come in and get say a half a gallon of soup and feed their entire family maybe there would be some liquidity allowance to this too either small beer or something like it and possibly a small loaf of bread and so in the cities people could still eat well even for a very small amount of money a great example of someone in this time period is the author of this cottage cook which is hannah moore and she's writing hundreds of small pamphlets helping out people with different ideas sometimes their moralistic teachings sometimes they have a religious bent to them but she has a real heart for what's happening with these people in the lower part of society she really wants to help them out as best she can and the whole beginning part of this is a is a little story about a woman who didn't feel like she had enough money to really help out people and hannah moore kind of goes through this the steps of of what somebody can do even if they don't have a lot of funds they can really help people out by teaching them how to cook or teaching them other things so there's a lot going on in this time period the the people in the upper parts of society aren't necessarily saying oh poor people you know there's nothing we can do about it they definitely want to reach down and help out the poor parts of society right here in the late 18th century definitely probably a change from what was happening earlier on in the 18th century so let me read to you this little section from the cottage cook or showing the way to do much with little money right here at the end of the main story she's talking to someone and she says you have taught me that much good may be done with a little money and that the heart and the head and the hands are of some use as well as the purse so there's mrs jones in this story learning about what she can do and again if i mean you can almost connect right back with the christmas carol and scrooge there was scrooge and he was very very well to do he wasn't really doing anything with this money but he had a lot of money people came to him and said hey how can you help out the poor and he asks immediately what about the workhouses what about the poor houses aren't they doing the right thing and here in this book they're definitely saying how can we help out the poor without sending them to those very places the poor house workhouse in the late 18th century england were very very difficult places they made them that way on purpose they didn't want people to stay there they didn't want people to live in the poor house forever and so they made it a very very dismal existence this these works are meant to keep people out of those very places how can we help out the poor so here it is the soup right out of the cottage cook ryan what did you think about the recipe it's really straightforward it's really simple uh there were a lot of root vegetables that you could use and i just decided to use them all because we have them all a little bit of everything yeah right also i mean i think the special thing is the oatmeal that comes in at the end right i wouldn't complain about this no anytime it's interesting the texture is almost like when you thicken something with flour right the oatmeal does an excellent job of thickening this up so that it isn't a super thin uh soup right one of the references actually complained the the i think it was the college of uh physicians okay they were saying oh you know a liquid food doesn't uh doesn't work in your stomach they said oh the stomach acids turn it into solids and only then can you digest it which now of course we think is pretty silly yes but this thickening of the soup was an important part of that yeah yeah it's definitely hearty there's a lot going on here so it's got carrots it's got turnips i think the parsnips really come through that sweetness from the parsnips and then there's really only i mean compared to everything else there's only a little bit of meat true but you cut it small enough that it you know it fills it out yeah that's the whole idea of cut it really small right in that particular recipe it talked about salt beef you used fresh beef which is fine but salt beef would have been an inexpensive meat that they could have gotten any time of the year i think when you cut the cabbage up really small that really helps to fill it up too like you never have a bite that feels empty or brothy right there's always something there but it's not all greens you have this if you have the big pieces of greens in there you know it's hard to work around but in this way it fills it up it gives you the nutrition of the greens without the troublesome big leaves in there plus the greens you really don't it's not like a beef broth this is like a vegetable it tastes like a vegetable broth there's enough uh cabbage and the parsnips and the carrots really coming through and then there's body from the potatoes it's just good overall so i read that giant recipe from the soup kitchen one right with the 80 pounds the their instructions were to actually cook those meats in a digester or pressure cooker so that it turned everything into a broth i am so glad we tried this recipe it has an amazingly rich history an important history let me read to you the final paragraphs from the cottage cook this is the friendly hints at the very end the difference between eating bread new and stale is one loaf in five if you turn your meat into broth it will go much further than if you roast it or bake it if you have a garden make the most of it a bit of a leak or an onion makes all dishes savory at small expense if the money spent on fresh butter were spent on meat poor families would be much better fed than they are if money spent on tea were spent on home brewed beer the wife would be better fed the husband better pleased and both would be healthier keep a little scotch barley rice dried peas and oatmeal in the house they are all cheap and don't spoil keep also pepper and ginger pay your debts serve god love your neighbor the end if you want more information on the lives of the poor check out this episode

Channel: Townsends

Views: 842,260

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

Id: -WjvTGkRzZM

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021

Reddit Comments

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love that dudes videos,would wanna live like that