18th century: A rich man can afford a pineapple 🍍, a poor man can afford a salmon 🐟. 21st century: A rich man can afford a salmon 🐟, a poor man can afford a pineapple 🍍.

The cover with a plate full of coins is so hilarious.

That dessert fountain description made me feel peasant-poor, hundreds of years down the line watching this video on a $3200 computer lol.

These days a rich mans feast is a 6 pack of decent beer with a wendys baconator

Jon's reaction after biting into that that tart was *exactly* like Max Miller when something turns out good 😆

For the rich man's feast, I half expected to see Jon dressed in fancy clothes (as in the thumbnail), sested at a table with at least one person in the background serving or clearing away the plate after each food was sampled. Having worked in a ritzy hotel's dining room as a waitress, I can tell you a whole army of chefs, sous chefs, cooks, and other prep people were involved.

Interesting that the wearisome of the extravagant rich man's feast can cross cultural oceans. Around the same time in 18th cent Qing China, Chinese poet Yuan Mei noted that the ruling Manchu dynasty held feasts that "at the start of the feast the menu is about a hundred feet long". He noted that this is "mere display, not gastronomy". After such dinner, Yuan would returned home and cooked congee to fill his hunger.

Ah yes my favourite dish. A piece of eight.

I once had dinner in the House of Lords here in the UK (I'm not a politician, I was there as a guest of someone who ran a successful charity), and there were a whole lot of courses, but all your food was brought to you on individual plates. A member of the house I got chatting to did say that historically, the food wouldn't have been served to people individually, but laid on the table for people to take for their plate since it prevented the opportunity for targeted poisonings to happen. If you poisoned a dish, everyone would have an equal chance of falling victim to it.

As a Georgian enthusiast, it's so nice to see someone really dig into the difference between Russian service and French service!

Making capons is not an easy feat. I have castrated cattle and hogs, but chickens are difficult. My grandfather and his father knew how to do it. During the depression, my grandfather was a glassblower and did not have job worries. He did open his house for family that did not have that security. A small 3 bedroom house had 3 generations and 13-16 people living there. He fed them a lot of capons as people were raising chickens, but you cannot have a lot of roosters around. So, people would bring male chicks to my grandfather and his cost was 1/2 the capons. They would castrate them, and you got x/2 and he kept that. We had a Capon often while he was alive as he still knew how to do it. Now they cost $80-120, truly a rich man''s feast

I'm so glad you did this episode; it explains why my Mother-in-Law, who grew up poor on a tobacco farm in the South during the Depression, would be so proud of providing for special company 9 different vegetable dishes (plus the main dishes) for her table.

One of the reasons I love your channel is because you don’t focus on rich people. Sure, their history is interesting, but I want to know about how my ancestors lived and ate, and they definitely weren’t rich.

Finally feast that Jon Townsend deserves.

We are all richer for having Townsends in our lives .. ☮

As a guide at a historic house once told me, people in those days had fewer ways of showing off their wealth and prosperity than they do now. There were no high-end cars, private yachts or private jets to spend money on. Opulent estates, clothing and food and entertaining were a good way to show your social and economic status.

George the Third was often called farmer George because of his sympathies with common folk, and his work in trying to develop farming methods to make farming more profitable.

2:44 It is perhaps worth noting that George III was known as a fairly frugal man with modest tastes and a tendency to relatively informal habits in his private life. Perhaps this might partially explain why this list is filled with fairly common items.

Jon holding down his excitement about 5 pounds of nutmeg was funny, but I about lost it when he mentioned the sea man in a boating the fountain! "Row, row, row your boat, gently round the wine!! Merrily Merrily Merrily Merrily what a grand old time!!!😂😂

What my mother called 'Putting on the Aires' - trying to be what you're not. I really enjoy the videos of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Interesting that it is called "french style". In Poland when you make table full of food and anyone just take what they want, is called "Swedish table".

The book "The Count of Monte Cristo" (chapter 63) offers a view of the repast of the wealthy and a glimpse of the thinking behind the food served

The traditional feast for Christmas and Easter in my country is simplified "French serving" I now realise. We call it The Cold Table. You usually have 4-5 servings, each a full table. Less extravagant than the parties of the video, but same concept. And yes, it does take 4-5 hours for such a meal. 1. Fish and egg servings. 2. Bread with sliced meat, toppings, spreads. 3. Warm dishes. 4. Some special dish. 5. Cheese, grapes, crackers, ect. Or desserts. (6. Tea, portwine, chocolate).

Comparing this to Tasting History's videos on things like the Shoguns and Roman Emperors' feasts, it's interesting to see how for most of human history and even across cultures the point of food for elites was seemingly always to show off rather than fully enjoy everything. Unless you enjoyed flamingo tongues or creamed spinach in what would have ended up as a soggy loaf.

A hogshead is 63 gallons. I know this because more than 2 decades ago I was in a chemistry class where the teacher asked which system of measure we would prefer - imperial or metric. We all, of course (in the US), said imperial. He says, "I tell you what - I will give you an exam testing your ability to convert units of measure - one side of the paper is imperial, the other metric. After scoring I will let you determine which units of measure we use from here on out." One of the questions was, "How many gallons are in a hogshead?" We chose metric in the end.

9:01 "five pounds of grated nutmegs" - The James Townsend version has 15 pounds

It is amazing how the traditional 18th centuries western feast closely resembling the southern chinese fancy dining we still have in hong kong, malaysian chinese, and singapore chinese high-end restaurant now. Often time in business dinner, weddings or celebration feasts, we will be sitting at a round table for 8 to 10 persons, with a smaller rotatable round platform in the middle of the table for all the foods, often 6 ~ 12 courses, and have our own small plates and bowls. Throughout the whole meal, there will be new foods served, and our plates changed a few times. There will also be ingredients like dried abalone, sea cucumber and stocks that require up to a week of preparations.

I'm with the knave of hearts: I'd steal me one of them tarts!

I'd love to see something like this when you have the whole "village" together, and could have something of a crew working to make a whole meal for everyone. Maybe at a time of year you could source a lot of things easier (maybe from farmers markets, etc.) like summer-fall, where you could prepare a feast like this, but having more people, more resources, more hands, and more mouths to actually eat all of the food in the feast. Imagining something like a thanksgiving feast for everyone.

Excellent episode. I’d have loved to have seen him replicate a small “rich man’s” table setting and perhaps borrow an appropriate period outfit (since they’re otherwise expensive). 😁

9:05 "... five pounds of nutmeg..." In the far distance, through an echo of the time vortex, Jon can be heard shouting, "There's not enough nutmeg!" :) I suppose the closest thing to the idea of "a rich mans feast" you could get today, would be an all you can eat buffet, with dozens of different dishes all of which you can sample, from starters, mains and desserts.

It's not quite 18th century, but when I went to Versailles in France, I was told that the dishes were so expensive that there was one servant assigned to each plate. Not each place setting - each plate. And the plate was probably worth more than the servant. 😮

I do 14th century reenactment and you don't want to know how much I spent just trying to pull off a "mercenary with some extra coin" look. And an aristocratic impression would be ten times as expensive.

The thumbnail is basically AoE3's dutch in a nutshell.

I think it's important to note that John's saying this was about "new money" trying to act like "old money." A true rich man's feast would've been very different. Old money relied on ancient heritage and practices. The capon would have been allowed to age for days or weeks (whole with guts), then soused (boiled in a water, salt, and vinegar solution) before baking or roasting. In between "regular" courses (as we know them), there would be what we'd call dessert courses of cakes and tarts and pies and such. Sometimes a live-looking bird (think goose or swan) would come out where a whole bird was cooked and then encased in a paste with the feathers, neck, and head of the dead bird reattached. Other times you'd have a pie that you'd cut into only to have live birds fly out. A lot of these practices dated back to the medieval times and were very much still in use by the old money rich in the 18th Century. New money rich either never had such a legacy to draw from or the financial resources to put on such displays continuously.

A Capon is a rooster that has been "fixed". Similar to eunuchs and thus they get quite huge and remain tender well past the point of where a normal rooster is butchered...

'Well I'm upper-upper class high society God's gift to ballroom notoriety And I always fill my ballroom The event is never small The social pages say I've got The biggest balls of all' - AC/DC

The amount of time it took to create dishes like this in the 18th century, must have been immense. That looks really good. Cheers!

I recommend watching "Bebette's Feast" to get a sense of what the elites would eat compared to the average commoner.

I appreciate the explanation of the process. Feasting for the rich seems more of a societal obligation more than the food itself, so I can see why the food would be hard to feature in an episode. For the hesitation about it, I think you nailed the spirit of the concept. That spinach dish, in particular, may feature on a Thanksgiving spread in the years to come.

I like the description of a capon as a “special chicken”

Seeing that Townsends uploaded a new video sure is a feast to the eyes.

Its kinda "easy" to bake icecream. You place it(the icecream) on some buttom of cake/biscuit, perhaps with a tiny layer of whipped eggwhite. Can possibly skip one of the two if you feel lucky. You then cover all of the icecream with whipped eggwhite n sugar, and you bake that til it turn to maringue. The microstructure of the eggwhite with all its tiny airbubbles wil insulate the icecream just enough that if you time it perfectly, youll have warm baked icecream with a cold center.. Om nom nom

I really appreciate the attention Townsends pays to working people and all the different feast vids have really highlighted the various trades and lifestyles of the people. Too much of history is "Great Man" theory focused on the powerful (and often very rich) people who "shaped history." But while there have always been influential people, the history of humanity is the struggle of the working class.

So well done, Townsends team! I’ve been wanting to hear that quote about the fountain of punch with all the lemons again! I remember first hearing it on a holiday live stream when you used to do them in front of a curtain, and it blew my mind! So much fun! So well handled. ✌️😌💜

Thank you for addressing that this was not a common everyday thing, but for only a few times a year. I think history shows can often times come across as all these wonderful things always are happening and they don't when they try and present a day in the life of whoever. It would be neat to see what a common dinner was for a generic day, and maybe what they would do when hosting a friend too for the rich. Keep up the good work.

That fountain description fits in with every childhood fantasy I ever had of royalty and I feel so vindicated.

I assumed it was just a plate of nutmeg based on previous videos on the channel

I see I have arrived at the most opportune of times! Well met! :)

In olden days you don't eat chicken everyday. You keep chickens so you can get their eggs. You only slaughter chickens for special occasions. Now, I pretty much eat chicken everyday. The reverse is fish. Fish was so abundant back then, considering most settlements are formed near the bodies of water, people just eat lots of fish. Now, well, they're definitely more expensive than chicken, especially for something like salmon.

It sounds like the only person who legitimately enjoyed the whole affair was the boy who got to paddle around the fountain and serve drinks. Depending on his age, I could see a young boy actually being entertained by that for hours.

Questions: Would there be leftovers from a Rich Man's Feast? Would the help get to eat them? What would become of the 'waste'?

awesome videos! Like you said, lotta poor mans meals its so interesting to see a richer one

The reason for all this food and presentation - has nothing to do sustenance, like you said, Jon, and everything to do with Entertainment. A competition of who can put the greatest Show of a Meal with all of the accoutrements and the Best Taste, both Socially and Palette wise. Bored and boring people need a lot of distractions to get and keep their attention for short and long days. 😆😆😆 Thx for doing this, filming it and sharing it with us.

I genuinely could NOT care less about the food people ate hundreds of years ago but there’s something about your channel and your personality that’s so addictive. It’s such a comforting channel and i actually learn a lot.

"a huge disparity between the rich and the poor and there was barely a middle class" gee why does that seem sooo familiar???

Even though it wouldn’t be possible to recreate such a feast, this video paints such a vibrant picture that I feel almost like I’ve seen it in person.

Just as an FYI; George III was not a typical 18th century monarch. Obviously he was the King, so he lived better than 99.99% of his subjects. But by the standards of that era, he was actually pretty laid back. He preferred plain food, plain dress and a (relative for the time) informal royal court. His court was nothing like that of his contemporaries Louis XVI at Versailles, Catherine II in Russia or even the more minor monarchies that dotted the map of 18th century Europe. His subjects called him "Farmer George" because of his fondness for a simple country life and aversion to ostentatious ceremony and court etiquette. Completely contrary to the norms for royalty of the period, George spent as little money as he decently could, signed far more pardons than death sentences, loved his wife and doted on his children (some of whom turned into spoiled brats). His eventual decline into debilitating mental illness in an age when that was not understood, was a cruel fate for a generally kind and well intentioned monarch.

It is nice after a long week to sit down and relax, watching Jon talk history and cook! Something about his presentation is interesting and soothing.

We are getting close to experiencing what the 18th century was in todays time. Extreme wealth or extreme poverty, there is hardly any middleground or middleclass.

10:03 every face here is a meme. all of them.

For all the downsides of our highly interconnected world, it's really cool that so many of us can eat like this at least once a month

I believe we're forgetting the amount of food waste at these dinners were legendary as it was considered rude amongst the aristocracy to "finish" what was on your plate. Portions were super tiny, super rich, and of various textures and taste profiles to even allow you to make it through several courses.

Some of us in the wine industry love talking about the vineyard planting that was sold as New World wine back to their European mother nations. Here in Williamsburg we still have sections of town that are registered as landmarks to the 18th century vineyards that were decreed by the British.

we have feasts like this every day now. just take a trip to an all you can eat buffet. an expensive one.

nothing is as good as breakfast and townsends in the morning

Very informative presentation. Thank you for filling in the blanks with regard to what French cuisine in America was at the time, Carême and Escoffier are a whole 'nother story. Thank you.

One of those videos that really demonstrates how high our quality of life is today. We should be thankful that so many of us could afford a feast like this today whereas it would've seemed a dream to those of the past.

Surprising to see lobster on the list. I remember always hearing it used to be for the poor.

That looks absolutely amazing! Thank you for all of the hard work you do. I love this channel! It's informational but also wholesome in a way that makes it a great escape from all the drama

Many rich people were on the let's get gout diet.

And this is why* the French Revolution happened. *Among several other reasons, but listing all that down would kill the joke.

Thanks for the awesome content and amazing videos!!

Catching up on all the Townsends i missed over the last 2 weeks. ITS A TOWNSENDS SUNDAY!!!

Strong work...as usual! Thank you for this great presentation!

I so truly love your videos

Great program, as always. Very interesting seeing the rich man's feast, but it is easy making a feast for a rich man. The real challenge is making a feast for a poor man, which is why I love those programs.

Amazing content! There is always quality in your work.

Excellent video Jon like always! I love the feast videos!

This was so incredibly interesting. Your productions are always entertaining and educational.

This was so interesting. Love this channel.

He's face couldn't hide how good the sweet tar was. muhahaha

Big fan bro

Love your videos

I’m continually impressed by the amount of effort that goes into these videos, from the research to the cooking to the editing. You definitely don’t phone it in!

Great video. Nicely done, great imagery describing meals of the rich from the past. 😊

I really want to get one of those tarts right now.

Thank you for this excellent video. Carry On Sir!

Townsends never gets old. Been watching for years and it’s always so comfy

I am so thankful for this channel. Such great content and wonderful presenters.😊 I love history keep up the amazing work gentlemen. 👏

Love the detail and depth you go through to explain the how and why. Really provides perspective.

Great video, thank you sir.

I love this series. So informativ and entertaining at the same time. I hope this feast also benefitted the rest of the team 🍽️

Watched this channel for a long time and also from the same area as you and i gotta say im glad to see you treat yourseld this time. You deserve that kings feast.

How fascinating. I learned so much and could nearly taste what your team made.

Rich or poor, I always enjoy your food videos, sir. Happy reenacting!

1:05 -- When the middle class began to expand during the early 19th century, upper class people weren't entirely sure where middle class people fit in the social hierarchy.

I always love your videos keep up the good work.

Thank you Townsends for making my lunch time all the more enjoyable!

Sounds very interesting John thank you very much always like the videos real well when you are physically active doing things I kind of relate to them