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As a Brit, looking at food that appears both bland and horrifying at the same time gives me a sense of warm childhood nostalgia...

I feel like I want to redeem this recipe. I'm thinking smoked fish, more lightly cooked, swap out the milk for chicken stock (for the rice), and breadcrumbs on the top before the egg is poured over. Edit: Your reaction on eating it was priceless!

Max needs to make a playlist titled “Dishes That Do Not Spark Joy”, so we can watch a succession of vids where we can enjoy Max’s tasting-something-awful face. Because that does spark joy for me, and I suspect, many others. 😊

My grandmother was a preemie (her skin was still see through) and she was put in a shoe box and kept in the oven. Thanks to you I now know that it was only the pilot light that was keeping her warm. Thanks for taking one for the team on this one.

I agree with everyone else who’s said it… Max needs to do a 1950s-60s weird casserole series. Bust out the mayo and Jello!

Fish: $5 Rice: $2 Max's face when eating it: Priceless For everything else, there's Mastercard.

Spoiler Alert: "This does not spark joy." This sentence had my family ROTFL. Poor Max, you can tell he was trying to like it, then trying to make sense of the texture, and then finally giving up on saying something-- anything-- nice about it. The strain from the effort was palpable. We feel for you, Max. Hope the next videos give you more joy.

"I don't like that at all. That does not spark joy" is the funniest thing I've heard in a while. I came to see this one again from a comment on his Marie Antoinette Diet video from today and I'm glad I rewatched this haha I couldn't eat it myself.

As a child, I could never figure out how Gretel pushed the witch into the oven. 😊 This history tells me how easy it would have been to push her into a medieval oven!

In those few seconds between the bite and the verdict, your expression took an entire journey. Thank you for taking one for the team. ❤️

In my 30s, I went to visit a friend back home and her husband. Either her parents or his gave them a 1950s recipe book and it had the oddest recipes in it. The entire evening we just took turns reading aloud to each other and cracking up. Yes, please do a 1950s to 1960s series on weird casseroles/dishes!!! That would be amazing!

I am so sorry that I laughed SO hard at 15:56 when the gag reflex kicked in! It's the look that gets me. And after such a noble effort to keep it down and actually swallow it that you say, "I don't like that at all." Comedy genius!!!

Fun fact: in peasant households in Russia, the stove could actually serve as a sleeping place as well. This area on top of the stove, called the perekryshka, was generally the warmest place in the home and was typically used by senior members of the household, the elderly, and the sick. Keep in mind that the stoves in these homes were very large, with thick walls, so it's easy to see how they could end up serving this function during those long, cold winters!

Poor Max. I laughed out loud at the expression he made when he tasted this concoction. Thanks for taking one for the team.

I love the honesty of this channel. Removing the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia (or the fetishization of old things) helps us *truly* recognize, appreciate, and rediscover the stuff actually worth keeping... and genuinely to appreciate progress as well. Bless you, Max.

The fact he’s so funny even when he’s not trying to be 😂 I love this channel so much

I love that lawless era of chaotic-evil recipes from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Casseroles, jello, mayonnaise, hotdogs, food coloring, death-trap kitchen gadgets. Absolute madness.

I remember asking Mom why she never made those gelatin /aspic things for us. She said she loved us & didn’t want Dad to divorce her & take us back to Michigan. (just kidding-sorta)

My gramma had ur stove. She used it up thru the 1980s. It was the first new stove she got & was the last one she used. I'm so envious & so happy for u too. It's a wonderful thing. The warm middle grittle she used when making bread for a proofing area & a holding spot for someone's late meal.

Congrats on your new home!! 🥳 I LOVE THAT STOVE!!!!!! ❤ "Learn from my mistakes...they are plentiful." My new personal motto.

Jose definitely had fun with the subtitles on this one. "Chews" "Chews less enthusiastically" I like that he shows his personality through the show even though he's not technically on it. Hi Jose!

I freaking love the recipe. "Boil fish for 45 minutes, then throw out all the flavour. Cook rice with flavourings, then throw out the flavourings. Layer fish and rice; salt and pepper only permitted flavourings. Cover with unseasoned eggs and milk. Bake." I'd add a sprig of dill or sprinkling of paprika to it, but I'm sure it'd just spontaneously combust.

Honestly this sounds pretty good. I've seen some recipes from this era and they're truly nightmare fuel. Cold lime jello with canned tuna and raw onion, ham with bananas and hollandaise sauce, bologna cake (layers or bologna and condiments frosted in a savory cream cheese), etc. Mayonnaise is generally forced in these recipes in the absolute weirdest places, like the Christmas candle, a dessert made with a banana and other fruits made to look like a lit and melting candle; it's got cherries for a flame and orange for a base, and what's the melting wax? A custard? Whipped cream? No! MAYONNAISE!

Boy-I will no longer take for granted what my present oven range is able to do. And our present-day pots/pans, air fryers, slow cookers, cooking utensils, cooking thermometers, refrigerator/freezer. And also the huge availability of diverse ingredients we have within a 10-minute drive. Knowing this makes me hold cooks/bakers of past centuries in even higher esteem for what they could accomplish cook/bake-wise. ❤️

Gotta admire Max for getting a whole-ass 1950s-style kitchen, entirely for this video, and for no other reason whatsoever.

I thought I had a rough week. This poor man hasn’t had a chance to unpack, his oven broke, and his fish pudding tastes gross, but he handles himself and gives us a professional, detailed review. Thank you Max. I loved this history lesson too!

These "storage" drawers are actually called warming ovens. Keep foods you want to keep warm until dinner time in them, or warm up your already baked bread in them. That is what they are still used for in oven/stoves today too! BTW, I'd LOVE to have that oven! Love it.

Honestly "learn from my mistakes, they are plentiful" is something I am probably going to say to my children someday.

Oh gosh, I laughed so hard at the face you made. "It does not spark joy." Hilarious. Congrats on the new old home. Hopefully your next endeavor will be more palatable.

15:55 I started laughing as the first hint of true regret showed on Max's face. It got even better from there, culminating in the eminently meme-able "I don't like that at all. Oh, that does not spark joy."

"Oh that does not spark joy..." Thank you for the laugh!

Your set-up's always been fine for someone who "never figured out lighting." I always just imagine you in a kitchen of whatever era you're cooking from, complete with a period-appropriate portrait/sculpture of the featured Pokemon.

the utilities that the oven has (clock/timer, shakers, griddle w/pilot light, four burners, two ovens, the "grillevator", oven cover that doubles as a shelf, storage space at the bottom, and a burner waste deposit tray) is impressive

The journey your face took as you were eating/processing this dish was one of the best things ever.

Meanwhile here in Europe fish pudding is absolutely still a thing despite everyone having the same reaction to it as you. One of life's big mysteries. Usually with thinly sliced potatoes instead of the rice though.

I remember staying with my grandmother as a toddler/pre-schooler: Every morning, her first action after getting out of bed would be to traipse to the kitchen and fire up the stove (classic kitchen range thing) with a coal briquette or two, because that thing heated the kitchen, part of the bedroom and the two corridors leading away. She had a "modern" gas oven/cooker which used big gas bottles for most of her cooking, but the old contraption was still used for warming up milk or cooking eggs. And boy, did it get hot! We were always a bit afraid of it, but very grateful for the heat it radiated, as the flat would otherwise be freezing cold until the oil heater in the other room would finally start up, which it sometimes did not.

My mother's mother, long since passed, would rotate sleeping on the stove with her siblings when she was a little girl in Moldova. Your little history of the stove sparks joy in my heart!

That oven/stove combo actually seems a lot nicer than a lot of the ones sold today! So many useful features!

I was enjoying this when I suddenly realized that I was sitting in the same room as an old stove! We don't know exactly when the house (in Sweden) was built but probably in the early 20th century and the stove and oven is from that time as well. The stove is a Näfveqvarn no 7 (made in sweden), for burning woods (or coal, but my farming relatives used wood) in the furnace and three relatively large hobs to cook your food on. It also was used to warm up the kitchen as it's in a large hearth in the middle of the house with 4-5 fireplaces and stoves in the other rooms connected to it. Thus in the hearth in the kitchen behind the stove there is also an oven in the brick wall, likely for bread. They're no longer in use and haven't been for a long time but still look very nice and not rusty. I bet if you cleaned it up properly it could be used again!

I love the closed captions when Max tries the pudding!

To say I DIED laughing at Max's face when taking that first bite of the casserole The emotions he felt.... It was beautiful 🤣🤣🤣🤣

One of the things I like most about this channel is the spirit of experimentation and no fear to fail…followed by brutal honesty. Love it! Totally relatable. Congrats on the move!

Interesting tidbit: The wood stove (the one where you heat up the oven by burning wood and then use the residual heat to bake your goods) is still in use in some of the more traditional bakeries, e.g. in Germany for the real Holzofen-Brot (wood-fired oven bread), but also for traditional Pizza.

Fish pie (made with mashed potato) was a standard of my 60s British school years - still brings an affectionate shudder - though I can at last admit that I seem to remember liking it quite a lot, especially with cheese on top.

Max, this reminds me of a dish my family ate in the mid-50's. I believe my grandmother found the recipe in Better Homes & Gardens magazine and she was excited about it because it was so cheap. From memory I think it was a casserole made from broccoli, canned tuna, inexpensive dairy products and very ordinary seasonings. It was called Tuna Fish & Broccoli Casserole. I was eight when we were first served it and I was suspicious right away. I tried a bite of it and nearly choked. The adults in the family were all saying Eat it! Eat it! It's good for you! I tried but couldn't get it down and I actually broke all the family rules, got up from the table without permission, and ran out the front door screaming. Surprisingly, when my parents recovered me from the woods, I was not forced to eat it again.

During my teens, my culinary self-education entailed a LOT of learning to cook from old cookbooks of the 50s I had found in different places! It was a surprisingly wonderful way to learn... I astonished my family by one day producing a nicely turned out "surprise! Look what I made for lunch!" cheese souffle with a side of salad and warm rolls. I tried it without any trepidation, just because it sounded tasty, because the cookbook said modern ovens and a good recipe made it "a snap for even the busy housewife to prepare" and frankly, the book was right! I made it again and again after that with no problems. I only learned after we sat down to eat that my Mom, who cooked for a living in a setting that definitely did not require souflees, had never even attempted one because of their finicky reputation. The cookbooks contained recipes that were thoroughly tested, and also emphasized and taught being economical, making food look appetizing, and balancing the flavours and textures in a meal... They even presented menus for all kinds of occasions and time-budgets. They were a wonderful education, and fully replaced the home ec classes I had no time for. But they also included true horrors like hotdog and fruit aspic, directions on how to butcher a squirrel for stew (a job for the man of the house, he will need a good solid board, and must begin by nailing the skull firmly to the wood...shudder) recipes for "sandwich loaf" with every possible ingredient crammed together inside, And sometimes alarming sounding casseroles, lol I can't wait to see whether this dish turns out a surprise dainty, or a complete horror show! Thanks for this! Congratulations on the new house, and no apologies needed. We are just thrilled to get your content.

The cat sitting in what is presumably a warm spot of the stuba at 9:57 is amazing. I love seeing cats being cats in history.

"Oh I don't like that at all." brought tears to my eyes from laughing. "Oh that does not spark joy."

Let's take a moment to appreciate the expression Max made when tasting the pudding.

The clay ovens with the round pots to distribute heat are still quite common in older houses in Germany, called "Kachelofen" they are for heating the whole apartment or house and look very pretty. You can keep your collectibles on top too.

Man's face went through all five stages of grief in that bite

My existing North Carolina native living amongst tobacco farms (ca 1974) Auntie (50 y.o.) cooked on one of those HUGE iron wood burning stoves. Her hubby felt bad for her & thought, along with indoor plumbing, should be modernized. After installation & many burned meals, he came home after work & found the electric stove out in the yard, an angry Auntie at the door demanding her perfect stove be brought back in. Not a burnt biscuit afterwards.

B*tch pudding is my favorite RC character and I never would've expected to see her referenced here of all places.

I felt so bad with how hard I laughed when you tasted the pudding, your face was just priceless lol. Here's hoping to many more delicious recipes in your new kitchen!

At Home by Bill Bryson is a really fun book basically about the history of where the stuff in your home came from.

16:04 That forced swallow. That’s when you knew Max didn’t enjoy the fish pudding whatsoever.

I'm so glad that you're keeping the old stove. I learned how to cook on a wood burning stove, and the person who taught me stuck her hand in the oven section to judge the heat, and she used her hand to judge how hot the burners were. The other thing she did was sing verses of psalms to know how long something such as a tray of cookies was in the oven. The stove had 2 sections, one for the fire and one for the oven. There was always a big tea kettle full of water on the back burner that was hot, but not boiling. Every night we had to prepare the fire for the night so it wouldn't go out. It takes a long time to heat up a wood burning stove, so... if there was to be a hot breakfast, we had to bank the fire properly.

absolutely wowed by the new kitchen! very 50's with that marble and tile aesthetic. and the stove really ties it all together.

I'm from Sweden and I grew up eating something similar. Mild and buttery. A kid-friendly way to serve fish.

I grew up in an old farmhouse. There was me, my mother and father and my mothers mother, my grandmother. Well anyway they had an old Home Comfort wood stove. The stove had an oven, a griddle, two eyes and warming shelves above. Also, at the far right end it had a water tank. When you built a fire in the stove it would heat the eyes directly above the fire. The heat circulated and heated the griddle, then heated the oven...then heated the water in the water tank which i think was 10 gallons. This stove also heated the kitchen. I spent many winter morning huddled around that old stove and even though my mother had an electric oven she and my grandmother cooked many a fine dinners on that old wood stove. Those were hard days back then but I still have soooo many fond memories growing up in that old house. Thank you for posting.

I’ve never laughed so hard at a Tasting History episode. When you tasted history, the look on your face was priceless. 😂😂😂 Congratulations on the new house, it looks fab!!

My favourite thing is when Max has to brace himself physically on the table when he doesn’t enjoy a recipe he’s made 😂

Fish lips calls for tender cheeks. Adorable!!!!!!!

At Uni in the late 70’s I had a friend who could only cook two things; corned beef hash and ‘fish custard’ which he is cooking here but there was no rice. Just the egg and milk! I’d never heard of it.

Wow I just had the biggest mindblow! I my dialekt (rural Austria) we call the living room the "stube", and now I know that it is named after the huge "ovens" that are typically in there. The more you know. Thanks Max!

Untill the 50's nobody had an oven in my small village of south of France, if you wanted to bake something you'd take it to the baker and he would put it in his cooling oven after making the bread.

I showed my mother this recipe and how you said the flavors didn't go well together. She said the aim might have been something more like Chinese joong / zongzi, or rice dumplings, which combine sweet and savory flavor profiles in a soft sticky texture. The fish pudding might have benefited from the addition of shiitake mushrooms, mung beans, peanuts, and a wrapping of bamboo leaves. I would love to see you revisit recipes that didn't turn out so well and figure out ways to spruce them up.

When you mentioned the 19th century Rumford fireplace it reminded me that the place I have an internship with is a 19th century military fort. The Commadant's house has a kitchen one the basement level with the original fireplace still intact. It had been walled over until there were some restorations being done and they uncovered the fireplace. We still use it to do cooking demonstrations.

You rarely don't like something, but when it happens, you just can't hide it! 😂 Love your honesty!

I just adore most things about the 50s, the clothes, the movies, the makeup, the cars, the hair.... but oh boy, the food was certainly interesting lol.... Also your new kitchen is absolutely lovely!

I'd love more episodes covering the history/development of kitchen tools or techniques!

Loved this episode, Max, especially when we saw the '50s style kitchen... the first thing my wife said "Is THAT his new kitchen?!" Made me chuckle, since our first house was built in '51 and the kitchen looked a great deal like yours. Though not a fan of the fish pudding recipe, we really enjoyed your historical look at ovens. My earliest recollection is of my grandmother's wood & coal stove (she lived on the second floor of a Chicago 3-flat)... mid'50s era. Back to our '50s home & kitchen... though we moved in in '84, the stove was original to the house: a Roper gas range... the manufacturer's plate on the back indicated it was built in '49. That was an absolutely amazing oven! Four burners, lit via pilot light... outstanding flame control, just like yours. An oversized oven, wider than today's standard home gas ovens, but had to be lit with a match; the stove had a compartment adjacent to the oven for keeping cooked foods warm, and a storage drawer below the oven/warming chamber for pots & pans. No self-cleaning cycle for that oven! Cleaning was all caustic & elbow grease! I really liked that oven and we used it for several more years until it got to the point where porcelain would just flake & ping off randomly whenever a burner or the oven was lit, exposing more and more iron below... I was so sad to get rid of that old Roper... it was used daily, by our predecessors and then by us for over forty years... After replacing it, we went through two more, new gas stoves within the next twenty years, and their ability to hold heat and regulate temperature was no where as good as that old Roper!

Oh, Max…. He looked like he was seriously questioning his life choices after that bite…

My mother said when she was a child they used the flour browning method in their wood stove. 10 minutes to golden brown was the goal fior bread.

My dad's house when I was growing up was from the mid-19th century. There was a big chimney up the middle of the original structure, and you could still find the places where the original Franklin stoves fed into it. Mind you, the 'new' part of the house was still from like 1905 or so and was the only part with indoor plumbing and was an entirely different architectural style.

The kitchen appliances from the 50’s-60’s were crazy. Fridges had multiple options including butter warmers. Stoves had built in mobile dishwashers, I think it was VIKING or UNIVERSAL that produced it.

In home economics we were taught that the left side of your vintage stove was meant to hold cereals, to keep them warm and dry. My mother had an identical stove to yours, and she used it to hold pots and pans.

That was quite the series of faces while tasting. Very, um, "OMG I can't spit this out on camera." Well done! And I LOVE the stove!

In Sweden we have something called Bohuslän fish pudding. In it, we have rice porridge with eggs and cream, so that it hardens, we have dill and nutmeg. Served with boiled potatoes, melted butter and grated horseradish. Very delicious dish! 😋😋

I've been binge watching your channel for the past two weeks and to be honest, the best part of it is the music. I love how it's curated for each episode. Thanks for putting in so much work into your videos

As soon as you mentioned 1950's I nodded along. Those countertop and tile colours match the era. (Vanilla yellow and green were the staple then until the 70's/80's when it was replaced with brown and orange.)

I had a gigglefit at that rollercoaster of facial expressions when you tried it.

I love that you always have a Pokémon plush in the background that is thematic with the episode. You must have a massive storage of them.

Honorable mention to an ingenious Roman invention called a craticula. On a metal bed or inside a metal frame, you can make a fire safely, and it comes with two round stovetop places for pots and several moveable rods you can use as a grill. May or may not have been portable, we have a portable version. Ingenious.

I went to an estate sale and got "The Joys of Jell-O" book from the mid-60's. They LOVED putting fish in Jell-O. There's a recipe for "Ring Around The Tuna" and it's revolting. Has olives, pimentos and celery and a glob of tuna salad in the middle. So wild.

I'm sure someone else had already said it, but the lower drawers aren't for storage, they're warming drawers. You'd use them to warm plates while cooking dinner or keeping already cooked foods warm while everything else is sorted. Great video as always, I couldn't imagine this would turn out as anything but bad!

The stove we had growing up was similar to this one, and my grandma loved the “griddle” for proofing bread- which I think was its primary intended purpose.

"That doesn't spark joy." Best put-down of 50s cooking ever.

My grandma on my mom’s side had this recipe book…I grew up eating many of these abominations as well as weird Midwestern meals. Then in weekends and certain holidays I’d be with my grandma on my dad’s side who was Arab. The flavors and spices were always a welcome reprieve 😂

It sounds like a weird version of kedgeree. My mother, a child of the 1950s, still makes this sort of food. She calls it "sea pie"... I suppose in the 50s it was a huge step up from spam and powdered eggs, but I guess you had to be there!

Here in rural Germany (in bavaria at least) you can still find those indoor clay ovens with ceramic pots (though usually ceramic tiles) in older homes at least. They usually look a lot like the painting at 9:53, including that bench around the oven, which is a great place to be in winter, especially for the cats or dogs of the family :). Though I have yet to see one that is used for cooking. And often the older generations at least still call that room a "Stube". They are surprisingly great at heating a small home. Especially over night because they retain so much heat, so that it's usually still pretty warm the next morning even though the fire is long extinguished.

The faces at eating the quiche de poisson were absolutely priceless.

My friends Brad and Linda built a Rumford fireplace into their house when they updated it. They can warm the great room (which was built big enough to host the 30 person Washington County Chorale for rehearsals - this is in Oregon) with an amount of wood that the original fireplace would have used to just START the fire. They throw heat quite nicely and store it into the bricks to radiate out later. The fish pudding sounds every bit as lovely as the expression on your face when you were tasting it. I imagine it was an attempt to somehow redeem Lutefisk, that failed by treating some other poor innocent fish as if it were dried, salted, and soaked in lye.

My mom has that exact stove in her kitchen. She puts the pilots out during summertime and doesn't use it at all because it heats up the house too much...I think there are something like six or seven pilots, all of which have to be lit at all times, or they'll fill the house with gas. Fun! It is a beautiful stove, though, and that elevating broiler makes the best garlic bread you've ever had.

In Northern China, which gets very cold during the winter, they used to build out a lot of hollow stone passages underneath a raised floor called a Kang which could channel heat from the hearth. Similar to a super early temperature controlled floor. During the hot summer the cold stone would be cool to the touch and during the winter the floor would channel heat. Families would build their beds on top and sleep in relative comfort.

OMG. my grandmother’s kitchen had one of those Grande Dames- couldn’t find anyone to repair it in a way that was fiscally doable…it was the Shaw thermostat. It baked the best cakes, roasted the best fish or chicken and broiled the best steaks..and the storage!! Sad day watching it take from the kitchen after 50 years - the new one literally can’t fill her shoes. I still miss them (grandma and her oven). If you get it up and running Max….broil a steak in that grill. Love your channel!

Fun fact about the Jamb Stove at 10:22! I work at the museum where that particular stove is as a craftsman! It's in the Miksch House at Old Salem Museums & Gardens. Given its age, we've never used it, but it's a beautiful piece.

I can still remember my paternal grandmother baking the most perfect sponge cakes in the coal burning stove she had, she would always get the temperature perfect using the place your arm in the oven method. She was a great cook and her cakes cooked in the coal stove were always better than any from the modern gas stove we had.

I was born and raised in Alaska, a dear friend of mine from St George Island made a dish called " Perok" also called Russian fish pie. Line a pie plate with a pie crust, put in 2 cups cooked rice that you can season how you like.( I use dill, parsley and mayo) spread out, on top of that layer, put a layer of sliced hard boiled eggs , enough to cover rice, on that, place a layer of sliced onions, then a large can of red salmon ( drained) then another layer of rice ( like the bottom layer) top with another pie crust. Put some vent holes on top. Bake at 350 for an hour or till crust is golden brown.