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As a chef, I sometimes feel burdened by cooking. Food history rein-stills how grateful and privileged I am to run a kitchen, create and prepare food daily . It is a beautifully intimate and humble art that will forever define who I am.

*We take it for granted today, but a single Dorito has more extreme nacho flavor than a peasant in the 1300s would get in his whole lifetime.*

This documentary: "Salmon was a luxury." Other documentary: "No it wasn't."

Today we all eat like only kings did back in the day. We actually eat better because we have access to more things from all over the world in all seasons.I like these documentaries because it helps to appreciate the luxuries we take for granted today.

People also did not die at 40 in the Middle Ages!!! That number is low due to high infant/child mortality.

The poor did eat a lot of fish: salted or dried saltwater fish was a medieval staple.

Butter is derived from the Ancient Greek “boutyron” - literally, “bovine (cow’s) cheese”; it was certainly widely available in the Classical world, and there is good evidence to suppose that it was introduced at least as far back as the Old Kingdom of Egypt, perhaps even earlier (before the middle of the fourth millennium BCE) in Mesopotamia, and farther afield in the Indus Valley civilizations centred at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. Keep in mind that these dates are only indicative of the earliest records we have for the preparation of dairy products akin to butter. In my estimation, it is very plausible that butter had already been known for millennia before that among nomadic pastoralists and cattle-herders.

"Butter had yet to be invented" um, no. Just no. Butter had been around for thousands of years. It existed in the middle ages. I was really enjoying this until that bit of ignorance and now I doubt all the rest of the information.

Has anyone noticed at 15:23 the guy eating soup has a spoon piercing through his green hat? 😂😂😂 I really thought he was going to use that spoon to eat his soup

Everything cooked with charcoal, even the bread. Food must have tasted amazing!

8:40 That is not exactly true. Peasants were generally allowed to hunt/trap smaller animals. Only certain (larger) game was reserved for the Nobility. Hunting a Rabbit was perfectly legal virtually everywhere, at the very least if it ventured near the fields.

Where did that weird butter "factoid" come from? Utterly preposterous. Butter was an invention of the Neolithic. Pots have been found in bogs dating to that time and later containing residue, as well as whole slabs of the stuff. The ancient Romans had strong opinions about butter, considering it a barbaric food, but valuing it instead for cosmetic purposes. Geez. What else did they get wrong in this piece?

20:20 i thought in the medieval era there was no car but i was wrong.

I love when people study food history! My grandfather cooked a duck pie twice and my mother ate both of them... ( He kept the duck hanging for two weeks)

Butter had yet to be invented 19:36?Butter had been around for 3000 years in Europe before the middle ages.

During the winter months the peasants ate pease porridge and salt cod. Everything was thrown into the cauldron over the fire day after day, added ingredients as came in on a daily basis with the pot seldom being cleaned out. Thus the nursery rhyme--"Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot nine days old."

Butter wasn't envented yet?....the Romans spoke of the German tribes using butter and how inferior butter was to olive oil...

I think I'm addicted to food. I have to some at least 2-3 times a day.

I've been looking for this video for months. I don't know where I saw it the first time, but I'm glad I finally found it!

This makes thankful about living in the 21st century.

19:36 "Butter had yet to be invented." Really?

The Romans used Butter, so did the Egyptians. It was very well known to the ancient world, but since it wasn’t known to middle age Europe until post crusades doesn’t mean it “wasn’t invented yet”.... c’mon guys.

Very interesting series but the costant interruptions for the ads is very annoying.

they had crazy good cameras back then

Looks good to me, I'll bring a bottle of wine.

Loved the Video!!Awesome Info about,Our World History!

This documentary clarified a lot of misconceptions I had on food during the middle ages.

Stone age "bog butter" was found in Irish peet bogs, so butter has been around for a long time.

Didn't realize that car was already there in medieval times 😂 20:21

Fascinating journey into the world of medieval cookery.

This looks like it's part of a series. I wish the rest would be posted.

hahahaha 20:19 Hold up boys, my uber just arrived i'll be back later for evening prayer

There is a lot of misinformation in this video. At 13:30, for instance, Allen Grieco states that people of lesser status consumed bread with "chaff" in it. This incorrect: chaff is inedible, and in fact the whole point of _threshing_ and _winnowing_ grain is to remove the inedible chaff from the grains themselves. He means "bran" -- not chaff. The inclusion of bran -- that is, the whole grain -- is what gives brown bread, which is what medieval peasants ate, its darker color. Refined grains, such as those used to make white bread, are processed to have the bran removed.

Really interesting and well filmed doc.

Really enjoyed this thanks.

OMG thanks so much for posting this! I've been scouring the internet for this series. I hope you all post more from this series *fingers crossed** all I can find is the Roman one and a clip on the 18th-century one. Excellent channel!

"Salmon was food for the nobility". Uh no. Salmon and freshwater fish were easy/plentiful to catch, and therefore, food of the peasantry. This documentary seems woefully under-researched.

Medieval Gordon Ramsay the squire. "Dost thou knowest that thine chicken is so raw the last squire that tried serving it is still rotting in the bloody dungeon!!????"

i made a killer 16th-17th Spanish paella i choose the north of spain soo i used smoked chorizo and chicken broth rather than south of spain ''sea side'' that use fish or squid ink broth and shrimp. made my own seasoning with the moor inspired saffron, turmeric and smoked paprika spice! i though i was the only person that liked to relive history with food! untill i saw this!

WTF "butter was not invented yet"? Butter has been around for 1000s of years.

How ironic that monks and priests, who were supposed to be the holiest, were the one who ate most meat and lived in comfort.

Thank you,very interesting ,and very well presented.

Excellent informative video. Thank you.

This makes me appreciate the fact that I bake my own bread. I haven’t bought bread in almost 9 months, and we always have bread in our home..home made is always best..

Butter was yet to be invented? They got that wrong. Butter has been around for 4500 years.

Great details. Fantastic documentary (except for the butter reference 🍴)

Amazing doc. Really recommend.

can you imagine turning up there via a time machine with a few bacon cheeseburgers, large fries, coke and some chicken nuggets for them to try ?!

A lot of the concepts behind medieval cookery (including periodic vegetarianism and the use of herbs and other ingredients as medicine rather than simply for flavour) resemble those of Aruvedic medicine, no doubt because of contact with India via the Silk Road. It is interesting that these concepts are starting to come into their own again! Also, George R.R. Martin uses an extensive knowledge of medieval cookery in his Song of Ice and Fire books.

I eat Chinese food for breakfast, cotton candy for lunch, and bread with mustard for dinner.

I find this stuff fascinating.

I thought salmon was considered peasant food in medieval times?

18:55-19:00 - Most of the higher clergy, then as now, hardly ever abstained let alone fasted...the strict application of such quaint practices were meant for the sheep - not the pastors. Throughout the Middle Ages, monastics and bishops, in particular, were renowned for their rotundness...

I love all of this and now I’m hungry

This is nice to watch whilst you're hungry... mmm!

...peasants ate salmon too, buddy. i wanna see the sources cited here.

THANK YOU for using "A.D." correctly!!!!! You began narrartion with, "It is the year of our Lord, 1427....." (You didnt say, " It is 1427 AD.....) Applause. Bravo. 👍👍👍👍👍👍

Terrific video. Amazing picturization.

Just pass me the mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, and hamburger helper.....LOL

fish was common!

I find it funny that they considered the white bread to be the best; granted there's not chaff. These days we're looking for the coolest grains; spelt, wheat, rye and a whole slew of others for our bread. I wonder what they would think of what we eat now.

Great documentary.

20:22 that's my car at the left

Did they just claim that people today wouldn't eat the meat in this time because it was too fresh and hadn't aged? I'm fully aware the they didn't eat rotten or spoiled meat; that's just an old wife's tale, but... Look, I don't know about you, but I prefer my meat fresh. I have eaten meat that was fresh killed. It's better. A lot better than meat that has sat frozen for a few weeks.

Salmon was amongst the most common fish in the middle ages. Actually there were times when salmon was considered a "poor man's fish", mainly used to feed servants...

I´d go with pasta in middle ages. Flour, eggs and water were avalible at the era, as well as cheese, and it goes well with anything, meat, vegetables, fish, mushroom...

My wife is Mexican and she uses a clay cooking pot just like the people in this film. Great beans are cooked this way.

Did she say butter wasn't invented in the MA?

they got a bunch of facts wrong

thank you for sharing

I love how everybody in the household pitched in and helped in the cooking and not force all the cooking on one person/woman. It's nice watching families work together like that 🙂

Fish for the wealthy and the church were kept in stews the others had highly salted and fresh fish from the Hansa and lakes/river baskets as in the Thames.

There was a car at 20:20 time traveler?

good stuff

37:57 mixing of spices

Isn’t it weird that the only challenge we have now is NOT to eat (in excess) !

15:09 how did that peasant afford a gold ring? Must of stolen it from a lord, to the gallows

its so interested, i really like it

The finding of science of what the peasants and not nobles ate. stews (or pottages) of meat (beef and mutton) and vegetables such as cabbage and leek, were the mainstay of the medieval peasant diet. The research also showed that dairy products, likely the ‘green cheeses’ known to be eaten by the peasantry, also played an important role in their diet. Often they relied on what they grew on their harvests. This is what Scientist discovered a few years ago and used a chemical and isotopic techniques to identify lipids, the fats, oils and natural waxes of the natural world, from the ceramics found at West Cotton in Northamptonshire.

Gordon Ramsey's ancestors

Holyshit the falsehoods in this documentary, I had to stop it at salmon was a luxury. Salmon was peasant food

We still use vert jus which is from The Young grapes. Mainly we use lemon in line but we still use some things from back then.

That soup looks gnarly @ 52:41

sanitation issues would make me hate this time.. the flies were rampant!

Hmm.. Modern History channel talked about this n said that salmon was a common food of the peasants and freely available in rivers...

Beautiful!

This made me so hungry.

I just watched another show that said peasants often ate salmon because it was caught in the wild...

20:20 awww, the history is wrong! the car did exist back in this days.

"Butter had yet to be invented." John Cena: Art thou certain about that?

I had a little chuckle at the aluminium pots shown....They had Iron, Bronze and Copper pots and some with Lead sealed joints.

Where does the idea come from that 'the poor' (ie: everyone beside the aristocracy) ate largely cereals? Don't these people know that growing cereals is a labourintensive and unpredictable business? If a person is relying on cereals for 90 percent of their calories (and they needed a lot of calories with physical labour and all), do they even know how much wheat and barley they needed to grow for a family of five?! Do they know how much LAND this takes?!! And what if a wheat or barley crop failed, and if the people were relying for 90 percent of these crops, this would mean that two bad harvest in a row would decimate, nay, eridicate a population. Rubbish! We know that cereals were important because you can STORE cereals. This meant that you could eat it in the winter when nothing else was growing. Fish and meat could be dried and salted (and they did). During the 'green' season, they ate a lot of vegetables. Really, these 'experts' are insane. Claiming that a population depended for 90 percent on one food for five, six centuries while the Irish nearly all died after relying on potatoes for 90 percent of their food for a couple of decades... Stupidity squared! If they had goats, they had milk and cheese. We historians KNOW that they had dried and salted fish. They had pigs for meat, chickens for eggs. Vegetables in the garden and 'wild food' on common land. And yes, they had cereals, and they, like the dried fish and salted meat, were important because these were the things that could be eaten during the entire year and did not rely on the season, which is handy if you don't have a freezer, fridge, canning jars and canner or airplanes and ships that bring you food from accross the world. You could only eat what you grew and raised yourself and a few things that were traded, such as dried and salted fish from the coast. Besides... not every 'poor person' was a penniless, downtrodden serf! There were many, many layers in medieval society. Some were the poorest of the poor and some had handsome houses, servants, land and animals, fine pewter and stoneware and richtly coloured clothes. And lots and varied food.

I love food. @_@

Very interesting.

Dinner early at 5pm? Most of us dutchies eat our dinner around that time aswell.

I'm melting cheese on a tortilla

The section about steam rooms makes me think of Scandinavian saunas, but from what I have seen in a video of someone living in Finland, while nudity in sauna settings is very casual, casual touching is almost totally avoided in all situations. I wonder at what point in history that came about, and was the no-touch culture a thing caused by religious chastity ideals?

Its amazing how far civilization has come..

and so in 43C heat I ventured out for Ginger and Cinnamon. And some honey. And I made that wine brew mentioned, and yep it's good OK. Probably better in front of a log fire though.. But I'll keep at it to get the taste perfect. More Ginger oddly, much more