Cooking Cheap Meals Like A Victorian

Cooking Cheap Meals Like A Victorian | Food History

Рет қаралды 1,450

Күн бұрын

In this week's food history video, I'm digging out a 19th century cookbook to find out how the Victorians cooked cheap meals to feed a family on a budget.
Delving into food history, I'm learning how one of the first celebrity chefs made a beef soup to feed 20 people: with very little beef, and a LOT of salt!
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00:00 - Intro
00:32 - Alexis Soyer
01:29 - Beef Soup
06:04 - Tasting
Recipe from Soyer's Shilling Cookery Book for the People, 1845:
“I first put one ounce of dripping into a sauce-pan (capable of holding two gallons of water), with a quarter of a pound of leg of beef without bones, cut into square pieces about half an inch, and two middle-sized onions, peeled and sliced.
“I then set the saucepan over a coal fire, and stirred the contents round for a few minutes with a wooden (or iron) spoon until fried lightly brown.”
I had then ready washed the peeling of two turnips, fifteen green leaves or tops of celery, and the green part of two leeks (the hole of which, I must observe, are always thrown away.
"Having cut the vegetables into small pieces, I throw them into the saucepan with the other ingredients, stirring them occasionally over the fire for another ten minutes; then added half a pound of common flour (any farinaceous substance would do), and half a pound of pearly barley, mixing all well together.
"I then added two gallons of water, seasoned with three ounces of salt, and a quarter of an ounce of brown sugar, stirred occasionally until boiling, and allowed it to simmer very gently for three hours, at the end of which time I found the barley perfectly tender. The above soup has been tasted by numerous noblemen, members of Parliament, and several ladies, who have lately visited my kitchen department, and who have considered it very good and nourishing.”
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#FoodHistory #UnicornStew
Unicorn Stew
Cooking the history books to taste weird and wonderful food from the past. New episodes every fortnight.
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Image Credits:
British Library
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Пікірлер: 33

@MissLMND 6 ай бұрын

very glad this popped up in my recommended, i'm always looking for more food history content. your production is great for a smaller channel - keep it up!

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

That’s really kind of you to say - thank you very much. I’m always trying to improve, so let me know if you ever have any suggestions or episode ideas 😊

@troystallard6895 6 ай бұрын

He specified peelings and green tops of vegetables because he was making his charity soup from the leavings that were otherwise being thrown away in well-to-do kitchens. Waste not, want not.....

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

You’re completely right and - although it got cut for time - I went into the fact that you would have quite a nice vegetable soup if it weren’t for the salt. The beef didn’t bring anything to the table. I mainly found it interesting because, although he’s often represented as this great man (which I believe is fair), he got a lot of criticism for how much his recipes alleviated helped. And leftovers or not, this felt like a really interesting litmus test for that debate 😊

@avondalemama470 5 ай бұрын

The salt would kill me. 😂😂😂

@unicornstew 5 ай бұрын

I needed so much water afterwards!

@bradbrisbane 17 күн бұрын

Brilliant. Thank you.

@CKellyCs2 6 ай бұрын

I really enjoyed this

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

Thanks buddy - appreciate it. Let me know if you have suggestions for future episodes!

@carolleeloodiva2071 3 ай бұрын

It’s NOT WASTEFUL! The Good Chef Soyer was making a ‘leftover’ type soup. He likely meant to encourage folks to use bits they would likely throw away.

@paladonis 6 ай бұрын

So I had to see just what 3 oz of salt looked like. I did 2 shot glasses (1.5oz standard) into a bowl and YIKES that is a lot of salt indeed. Perhaps that was why it was just the peelings of the radish instead of the whole thing. Probably would have toned down the radish spice, but not the salty. Wow to that whole thing, and props to braving tasting it!

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

It’s really astounding, isn’t it! I spent so long trying to make sure I wasn’t miscalculating from an old conversion. But I still can’t work out how he came to this conclusion.

@paladonis 6 ай бұрын

So my Grandmother did a whole family tree thing for that side of the family and she found some old recipes of my Great, Great grandfather. They really did write in such a different way back then. I haven't tried to recreate any of them, but I might want to now.@@unicornstew

@mairimmh 6 ай бұрын

Maybe the recipes stretch that much further if they taste so bad nobody can bear more than a spoonful or two 😮😅

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

Definitely one way to encourage beggars to be choosers!

@elliewilliams8137 6 ай бұрын

lol! This was exactly my thought 😂

@369142857 4 ай бұрын

Most likely someone scaled down a recipe for many more people but forgot to convert the salt. Or it was a typo.

@unicornstew 4 ай бұрын

I can only hope it was the latter!

@KC-gy5xw 6 ай бұрын

I had one of Alexis Soyer's books for the working classes recipes. pretty good stuff, I have to say, even if I wouldn't touch most of it with a bargepole in today's times... I hope I still have it because you never know.. I have to say though, I prefer his recipes to the ones from WW2. I suppose he would have meant to use the leftover bits of the celery/leeks, which of course you wouldn't get cleaned up like we do today.. The longer dark bits of leek would be tasty... not sure about the turnips (are those the ones he would have had? Couldn't they have been called something else then?) I think this should be left over bits and pieces soup!

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

It’s a bit cheeky because I chose a recipe that was clearly designed to make the most out of leftovers (although he doesn’t make that explicit). And there are a lot of recipes in his book that look more appealing off the page. But as this was a prominent example of feeding many with little, I couldn’t resist.

@carolleeloodiva2071 3 ай бұрын

It tasted like TURNIP because you used too much turnip, instead of just the peel as directed.

@oddboddz 3 ай бұрын

Maybe it was a third of an ounce of salt. Would make more sense.

@unicornstew 3 ай бұрын

Entirely possible, but I had to recreate it as the man wrote it 😊

@moniquem783 17 күн бұрын

So with the salt...... if this recipe was intended for people who were starving, they would also be dangerously lacking in electrolytes. I have a disorder in my adrenal glands and my body doesn't hold onto electrolytes properly. I now take capsules full of salt (and others full of potassium) every day, but I used to try to get what I needed from salting foods and it was nuts how much I could have before it would begin to taste even a little bit salty. I'm not saying that 3oz of salt definitely wasn't an error, but if that was 20 servings, 3oz converted to grams and then divided would be 4.25g of salt per serving, which is actually less than the recommended maximum today which is 5-6g of salt (2000-2400mg sodium). So given they had no other food providing any electrolytes, this was probably delicious to them and not at all salty. Maybe.

@unicornstew 14 күн бұрын

That’s a really interesting consideration that I admit I haven’t made. I do wonder to what extent they had this level of medical Knowledge around nutritional value at this point. All I can say is it was like eating soup made with seawater.

@moniquem783 14 күн бұрын

@@unicornstew oh yes they wouldn’t have known how much each person needs every day by weight, but they did know that they needed some every day back then. I’m thinking they probably figured out how much salt the average person uses per day and just multiplied it out. No actual science. But surely they would have had some of the intended recipients taste it before they made giant vats of it too, so it can’t have tasted like seawater to them.

@moniquem783 14 күн бұрын

@@unicornstew btw I made a roast and yorkies tonight, which I’ve been craving since I watched your yorkies video (did use my usual recipe that puffs though). Thanks for the inspiration 😊

@ShellyS2060 6 ай бұрын

Maybe the working class folks needed the salt to replenish electrolytes? Or, its just a bad recipe...

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

I honestly can’t say. I spent so long trying to work out whether I was using an outdated measurement, but it was all in proportion either way. By the end, I gave up asking the question and opted for a big glass of water.

@Electroceratops 6 ай бұрын

Did you actually sever your finger?! (Hope the cause has been neutralised!) Pity the recipe overdid the salt; maybe serving it with bread or peas might soften that? Possibly? Probably not, actually.

@unicornstew 6 ай бұрын

I was chopping up a carrot and it sadly didn’t go as planned. Just one of those things! I honestly spent so long on thinking how to save it or what the justification could be. But there’s nothing clear and obvious I can find.