[Servant]: M'lord, what do you wish to dine
this evening? [LordPat]: I desire something simple tonight. A hamburger. [Servant]: A what? [LordPat]: You know, a burger, ground up beef
wadded into a patty and then grilled. [Servant]:But, You said ham. [LordPat]: But it's actually beef. Try to stay with me here, kid. [Servant]: Ahh… [LordPat]: And on the side, I'd like some
fried potatoes. [Servant]: Potato? [LordPat]: Yes, potato! Boil em, mash em. Stick him in the stew. Only in this case, I want him stuck into a
big vat of hot oil. What is so hard about this? [Servant]: We’re not magician's m’lord
We can't make fictional foods. [LordPat]:They're not fictional! They’re just across an ocean on a landmass
that you don't even know exists yet. It is simple. God, no one is good at their jobs. Greetings upon thee Internet. Welcome to ye olde Food Theory, the show that
strives for the authentic medieval YouTube experience. Remembereth to send your small scribe to ring
the towne bell and send a missive to the Lord of comments leaving a five star review. Yeah. Just in case you didn't know, YouTube used
to have a five star rating system instead of likes and dislikes, the more you know. Okay, so despite our efforts to be totally
historically accurate, it's possible that some things occasionally slip through the
cracks. Like how YouTube wasn't invented until 2005. Maybe a YouTube video isn't the best place
for creating a feeling of ambiance, like being in medieval times. But you know what is the best place for creating
the ambiance of being in medieval times? Medieval Times. The US based theme restaurant that transports
diners back in time to experience all the food, all the sights and all the drama of
feasting while at a medieval tournament of champions. Authenticity is a key selling feature for
this chain. Employees are instructed to almost never break
character for any reason. Diners are outright served without silverware
to replicate that medieval dining experience. You know what that means, friends. This restaurant was basically one big old
flashing red sign saying, MatPat fight me. So is Medieval Times actually the authentic
medieval dining experience? Saddle up theorists. Today's episode is going to be a bloodbath. To begin, let's determine where and when the
story of Medieval Times is meant to take place. The medieval ages, also known as the Middle
Ages, are a period of history lasting roughly a thousand years, starting with the fall of
Rome and lasting until the Italian renaissance. So really claiming something as medieval is
about as nonspecific as you get. A thousand years is a long time in history. Thankfully though, we can actually narrow
it down to a specific century and region. You see, while Medieval Times seems to be
one of the most American themed restaurants to ever America. Its origins actually trace back to Spain. Back in 1983, Medieval Times’ founder Jose
Montaner converted his family owned restaurant into a type of dinner theater where audiences
could feast while watching his family's history, which traced back to the 11th century. And indeed it's there in 11th century Spain
that the original Medieval Times stories were set That said, Medieval Times does update its
story every few years, so it's possible that they might have migrated forward in time a
bit. As such, I'm going to give them a bunch of
wiggle room. Let's say between the years 950 and 1250. This means even if we're assuming the latest
possible date here, Medieval Times still should be happening in about 200 years before Columbus
sailed the ocean blue, starting the massive cultural and economic upheaval that would
eventually be known as the Columbian Exchange. And I call that event out specifically for
good reason. You see, it's hard to overstate just how much
of a cultural influence the Columbian Exchange had on the world at large. History classes usually only focus on the
flow of colonists from Europe to the Americas, but the newly opened trade passages meant
that plants, animals, diseases and fungi were finding new homes in far flung corners of
the planet, as boats and people constantly sailed back and forth across the Atlantic. This meant things like the introduction of
brand new ingredients to European chefs, things like sugar, chocolate, vanilla. All of that came into play in a brand new
way and forever changed the way that recipes were designed. But even existing ingredients would transform
as a result of all this. Sure, Europe had things like strawberries
before the Columbian Exchange, but they were very small. But then these global explorers suddenly discovered
massive strawberries just growing in modern day Chile and Peru. The conquistadors bring them back to Europe
and start hybridizing them with the home breeds. Stack on another 600 or so years of innovation,
scientific discovery and selective breeding. And suddenly you have yourself a fruit that
would almost be unrecognizable to a medieval European. So just right off the bat, living in the post
Columbian Exchange world is going to make our food inauthentic tasting. The food that exists today? It's just going to taste better nine times
out of ten because our ingredients have the benefit of selective breeding and engineering. Also falling into the “tastes inauthentic”
category are the drinks. I promise you I scoured the internet searching
for some kind of scholarly article about 11th century Spaniards adding lemon and lime juice
to spring water, thereby creating a proto-sprite, as it were. But alas, nobody in medieval Europe was drinking
anything close to what we'd call a soda. Instead, many of the nobility would have been
drinking wine and ale, so let's just start off the wine, shall we? Modern wine is a triumph of vinting and science
that would be utterly baffling to even the most masterful winemaker back in the Middle
Ages. Yeast, the magic little fungi that digivolves
boring old grape juice into palatable alcoholic wine wasn't discovered as an individual organism
until 1680. Before then, people had no idea what mechanism
actually created the alcoholic flavor and effect. As a result, they would just take rotten grape
juice and throw random stuff into it until it tasted okay. Winemaking was just a complete gamble here. They were trying anything from other fruit
juices to herbs and spices to even powdered marble trying to make it taste palatable. It was also thicker than the wine of today. So, you know, enjoy drinking your fermented
grapes, sludge fortified with powdered rock. Bottoms up. Similarly, the ale that you can find in medieval
taverns would be nothing like modern beer. Almost all modern beers use fresh cloned yeast
as their base, which gives them a clean light finish. Before the discovery of yeast, though, brewers
had to rely on dregs from previous batches to serve as a yeast starter for their next
brew. A lot like how a mother dough is used to bake
sourdough. That means that beer in the medieval era would
have had a flat sour taste. In fact, this method is still used today,
but it's used to create a very specific variety of beer known as exactly that. A sour. Back to the point though, if you really do
want the most authentic medieval beverage experience, just order yourself a sour beer
and then let it sit for about an hour or so before you drink it. Beyond that, hops, a key ingredient in most
modern beers, didn't become a popular additive until the 12th century, so a bit too late
for our purposes today. Hops adds a sharp, bitter taste to the beer. But more importantly, it acts as a preservative,
allowing modern beers to have a shelf life of months, whereas medieval beer would have
gone bad rather quickly. But even if you actively brewed using old
yeast and used no hops, you're still likely getting a much cleaner, lighter tasting beer
today because nowadays we have stainless steel brewing kettles. We have filters, thermometers, clean aged
barrels. Compare all of that to the old wooden kegs
and iron pots of ye olde times. And you can see that nowadays it's just a
completely different food world. So the beer and wine might have had themselves
a radically different taste from the Middle Ages, but at least they would have been there
on the table. The food on the other hand, it's just impossible. I couldn't find a single meal on the Medieval
Times menu that was even possible to get in medieval Spain. We'll start off with the very first course
for all attendees. Tomato Bisque. Tomatoes are delicious and are considered
to be a staple of modern European foods, especially Italian food. But before the Columbian Exchange, tomatoes
weren't available in Europe at all. Tomatoes are indigenous to South America,
and as a result, they weren't grown in Britain until the 1590s. Some researchers actually credit the Spanish
conquistador Hernan Cortes with bringing the seeds to Europe in 1519, and even then people
were still afraid of them. When Europeans first saw tomato leaves, they
recognized them as being related to nightshade, a poisonous plant. That then made Europeans skeptical of eating
tomatoes for a long time, meaning that even after the Columbian Exchange, it still took
an additional 200 years for tomatoes to actually catch on as a food. That makes the bowl of tomato bisque that
starts your medieval times meal about as historically accurate as giving a knight a musket. The next course is probably the most historically
accurate, the salad. Everyone from the lowliest peasants to the
richest noble would certainly have eaten their fair share of salads back in the Middle Ages
because meat was just expensive and difficult to produce. As a result, meat was reserved mostly for
special occasions, unless you were very well off. And even then, the powerful Catholic Church
banned eating meat or even animal products on Fridays, Saturdays and Wednesdays. That's right. In the Middle Ages, even the most powerful
of noble was vegan three times a week. So a salad isn't out of place here at all. Might as well give medieval times a point
for this one because it is honestly the only point they're getting this episode. Moving out of the main course, we got ourselves
a few options: A half chicken, some barbecue pork ribs, kielbasa sausage, and a vegetarian
hummus plate. So let's just go down the line, shall we? The half roasted chicken? It's probably the most realistic option of
the bunch. Chickens first arrived in Europe via trade
around 800 B.C. So it's perfectly reasonable to think that
Europeans were cooking and eating chickens in the 11th century. And because they were relatively easy to raise
and slaughter, they presented a viable food option. That said, chickens weren't as common as beef
or pork because they required more care and attention than your typical pig or cow. As a result, chickens were often reserved
for special occasions like feasts or holidays. Pigs? also viable on the tasting menu. They were domesticated thousands of years
ago, so it's not unreasonable to think that our medieval feast would have had some pork
ribs. Sure, their barbecue sauce wouldn't have been
loaded with sugar and tomato paste like modern barbecue sauces, but they would season their
meats with spices and wine so pretty darn close. Considering how loose the definition of barbecue
sauce can get sometimes I'm going to count it. The third choice of meat, though, that right
there is the clear deal breaker. The Kielbasa sausage was an invention of 14th
century Poland, putting it 2 to 3 centuries ahead of where we're at in history. That said though, sausage itself is ancient,
and some form of a sausage dish would have been popular in 11th century Spain. There was a popular Roman pork sausage named
Lucanica that might have held the top spot in Spain around this time. So not quite kielbasa, but still something
close. No, in this case, the vegetarian option is
the clear loser of the bunch. The hummus plate that just ain't happening. On the one hand, dishes involving chickpeas,
lentils, lemon juice and garlic go back for thousands of years. On the other hand, the first recipe known
for anything resembling hummus comes from the 13th century, and even then it is barely
what we'd call hummus today. At the end of the process, the 13th century
hummus was rolled thin and then left to dry all night. Doesn't exactly sound like the kind of soft
dip that we'd be expecting to get served as part of our kingly feast. But of them all, it's not actually the main
part of the main course that makes all of these impossible. Rather, it's the side dish, the roasted potatoes. Now, when you think of potatoes, you probably
think of the Irish right? and the great potato famine that depopulated
the country so badly that it still hasn't been able to recover to a population larger
than its 1840 peak. But believe it or not, potatoes didn't originate
in Ireland, nor did they originate in Russia, where they make vodka of the stuff. Instead, the potato has its origins in the
Andes Mountains of South America. Yeah, I was shocked by that fact too. Believe it or not, potatoes didn't make it
over to Europe until the late 16th century. It seems crazy to say, but the stereotype
of a poor European potato farmer, that's a new stereotype. As recently as 400 years ago, potatoes were
still a complete mystery to Europeans. You know what else was a mystery to them? Corn. Another staple food item that was introduced
to Europe as part of the Columbian Exchange. Geez. When you look at the food roster here, it
seems like all the most delicious stuff was over in the Americas. It’s kinda like the worst kind of video
game. All the best bits were locked behind this
massive paywall. Sure, potatoes are free to grab out of the
dirt and you can grow as much corn as you want. You’re just going to need to pay for a fleet
of ships capable of crossing the ocean before you can get to any of the stuff. So basically everything they give you at Medieval
Times is not the accurate Middle Ages dining experience that they advertise it being. But you know what's even more ironic? Even the stuff they don't give you is inauthentic. At Medieval Times one of the main selling
features is this lack of silverware. Sure, you can ask for some if you need it,
but the venue sells this idea that you can just eat with your hands like they did back
in the olden days. Except that's just not true. Sure, forks were fairly rare in Europe before
the 14th century, but knives and spoons, those things were everywhere. Most people would regularly use a knife with
their meal for cutting and a wooden spoon for eating things like soup. Sure, they would use their hands more often
than a modern diner, but it wasn't like medieval peasants had ever seen cutlery before. But beyond that, medieval times pretends that
all its audience members are nobles and are therefore getting the best treatment. Well, if that's the case, it would have been
expected in the Middle Ages for you to bring your own cutlery to a dinner engagement in
a box called a cadena. This would then give you a chance to show
off the fancy knife and spoon that you had specially made up for you. If you were wealthy enough these items may
have been made of silver or even gold, while poor merchants trying to look richer than
they were would get themselves a lead fork wrapped in gold leaf. So on the one hand, it's not very authentic
to have no silverware on the table in medieval times. On the other hand, it is authentic not to
offer that silverware in general. That said, something tells me that the heavily
armed security of Medieval Times might not appreciate me bringing a box with my own personal
knife into a public space. Some people just don't appreciate historical
accuracy. So, Medieval Times: The drinks are radically
different, the recipes include items that wouldn't have even been known to people in
the continent, and even their famous silverware policy is historically dubious. But honestly, if it means that I'm not having
to drink a mouthful of powdered marble. I'm okay with that. Disco? They were encouraging you to disco after your
jousting tournaments?? When did that commercial air? 1990?! Oh, boy. Medieval Times just missed all the time periods. But hey! All this talk about stale medieval mead has
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