Kind sir, i enjoy all of your videos so much. I wish that i was able to cook the dishes that you prepare. I'm a 74 year old man stuck in a nursing home in Texas. So many of the dishes the you cook remind of my grandmother and mothers cooking. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, they would cook the most wonderful meals . Now ,all I have are memories of years past . Many times when I'm watching one of your videos ,tears come to my eyes as i think about my mother,and grandmother when I was but a wee little lad. Thank you for each and every one of your uideos.😊
This may seem off topic, but as someone with hearing difficulties, I greatly appreciate the volume and clarity in these videos. I don't have to turn on the subtitles to understand and enjoy them. Thank you. And this was great!
I think the clarity and the careful enunciation are key. I have sensitive hearing, and usually have to turn the volume on most videos way down. I have never had to do that for this channel, even if they are playing music. Whoever is in charge of the sound on this channel is doing an amazing job, Whoever is in charge of the sound on this channel is doing an amazing job, since they're able to make both of us happy. This is especially appreciated, because the videos are top notch. I found this video in particular very engrossing. I wonder if some folks in upcoming generations will have kitchens that look more like break rooms in offices, with just a microwave and a fridge and freezer. And maybe an external portal that is expressly for meal delivery services.
@@Mistah_Boombastic_BiggieCheese the temperatures were fairly lower even in the 50's todays 40c weather was around 26 probably would be a bit colder still in the 18th century
According to channels Tasting History and Toldinstone, many Romans lived in apartments, but they could not cook in them, so they ate fast food, what simple establishments prepared to take out. Wondering now whether they had delivery.
@@MariaMartinez-researcher That... is an interesting thought. I mean there are portable foods. For example; pasties and such. But I wonder how complex that could actually get in a big city like Rome.
Thirty five years ago when I was in my mid thirties, I began dating a man who had spent a lot of time traveling in Europe. When he told me that they had high rise apartment buildings (at least 6-7 stories) in Spain, I thought he was teasing me. As a history lover, I had watched a lot of historical dramas and read historical fiction. I had never seen or read anything that suggested that there were apartment buildings for the average person. (I don’t include multistory residences which were parts of castles or palaces.). While I did get to see some of England, Wales and Ireland, I never saw any buildings such as he had seen. I would love to see a documentary on it and will look to see if any exist.
In addition to the water jacket, my stove had drying racks so if you came in with wet small items you could warm or dry them. Great for frozen socks and gloves.
Romans were on to something. Their bakeries often times were next to the baths. They used the heat from the bakery to heat the water in the neighboring baths. Pretty clever idea, reduced firewood consumption.
When I was a kid my grandmother had a coal stove (she didn't have any coal, she burnt trash in it). She also used to make what we called 'dishwater soup' which was one peeled potato, one peeled oniion, one beet (all whole, nothing cut up) in a pot with 2 gallons of water. If you were lucky you got the potato. She also gave my father 2 left shoes for his birthday that she picked up for $0.50. She said ' you might walk a little funny but what do you want for $0.50'. I have a feeling grandma missed the 'end of the depression notice'. 100% true. Times were simpler, not necessarily more comfortable.
The precursor to the easy bake oven was a mini cast iron stove. Toy versions were first created in the mid 19th century. Unfortunately, children were seriously injured and killed using the working models.
Ironically with our exceptionally convenient gas and electric hobs etc., in the UK one of the most desirable things for a country house is an Aga - the cast iron range cooker that's the direct descendant of the earliest metal wood stoves.
I was 27 when we bought our home and it came with a 1941 chambers stove. They were supposed to take it but they were unable to move it. So I was upset by it and ate fast food and microwave meals for a couple weeks then I decided to learn it. omg it's amazing and I love ot so much. Its double Insulated with with a griddle, broiler, and a well. It makes me so happy and I learned to cook, really cook, on it. Over 20 years now. When we cook at others homes and spaces we can tell the amazing difference of the simple device we have vs even the best technology solves. It's helped Andy desire to learn about older cooking adlifestyles and how to implement them into ours. This was a great video
The Easy-Bake Oven was introduced in 1963 by Kenner. The original used a pair of ordinary incandescent light bulbs as a heat source; so our ancestors had it rough. By 1997, more than 16 million Easy-Bake Ovens had been sold. I do so enjoy learning ancient history --- don't you?
An interesting variant is the tile stove. Basically a masonry oven with small fire in it. Useful in winter as the masonry would retain the heat and help warm the house at night.
Even in the 1950s, many people in rural North America didn't have power in their homes. Wood stoves, or cooking over fire was the only way people could prepare meals. Drying and canning were also essential for food preparation. Long ago, learning to cook was essential for survival. There were no fast food outlets around back then. This was very interesting. Cheers!
If you've ever read Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, there's a long description of the kinds of canning work done in the Hill Country of Texas, typically by women, when Johnson was young. It was brutally hard.
Interestingly canning (as we understand it today, a sealed, pasteurized, shelf stable product that can last several years) is only just around 200 years old itself. Having done home canning, I can attest that it is difficult work especially when canning hundreds of quarts in a day or two. It's definitely easier with more people.
"With our modern kitchens we cook less and less." I got a good chuckle out of that one! I can't help but think of the commercials I'm seeing lately (I won't mention the brand!) for a certain pre-prepared meal-in-a-box with a push-button robo-oven that the consumer needs very little effort on their part to use. "OK," I say to myself, "And just WHAT are you gonna do if there's a power failure?" Hey, if all else fails I've got my sterno stove and last-resort fireplace. It's wouldn't be fun but I'd manage. Great show Jon! And a FAST 16 minutes!
Yes, exactly. Even the ease of technology has, in many ways increased our dependence on many things. If for some reason our modern appliances became unusable, how many of us would still be able to continue on with our lives?....
@@campsiteministries Good question! My guess is country folk might get on all right, but city dwellers and even suburbanites would be in a LOT of trouble. Modern society has such a level of sophistication now pulling the rug out from under it would cause total chaos. Not pretty.
@wayneantoniazzi2706 Now is the time to encourage whoever is willing to pull their heads out of the sand and have ears to hear and eyes to see, (and willing to learn).
The farm my folks retired to had a big Kalamazoo wood stove with a plate/food warmer box on top, four lids, with one being a three ring, 9" one, a stove with a dial heat indicator on the door and a water heater on the right side. Although in perfect shape and beautiful with its white and blue enamel decorations, my Mom had always cooked on a gas stove and disliked all the fuss involved with burning wood. So the stove went in the barn and we got a bottle gas stove from Sears...Dad had to install a radiator in the kitchen so it wouldn't get cold in winter...
In Finland we never really had a lack of firewood, so we never really translated into gas ovens, straight to electric ones. Also the cooking appliances had to double up as heaters, so the typical kitchen stove until the 1950's maybe had a iron cover and separate oven (usually water tank too) but otherwise the stove was made of bricks, so the stove also kept the heat at least for a while to keep the kitchen nice and warm. Factory-made versions had a metal frame around the brickwork, also all-brick versions custom made by a mason were widely used. Sometimes connected to a larger fireplace or baking oven.
I grew up in an old house in rural Australia. We had an old wood fired stove/oven that also heated the water for the hot water system. It was great in winter. It would warm the front rooms of the house, heat the water and be the cooking place. Cooking cakes was a bit hit and miss because there was no way to regulate the heat other than add more wood or light it early in the day to cook a cake in the evening. Sometimes the water was so hot you could hear bubbling in the pipes. We were taught from a young age to be extra careful when turning on the hot water taps. Wood stoves are a lot of work to maintain and there is always a fine layer of soot building up somewhere.
Just want to thank you for making interesting videos for such a long time. That recent onion pie with the apples and hard-boiled eggs was intriguing. Just downloaded this video to watch later offline so I just wanted to give you a general appreciation.
This was a great episode, with information presented differently than I have heard it before. Thank you, Jon, for being willing to do all that research and share it with us. You deserve your success.
The remarkable thing about the thumbnail is that the same story has played out with the Easy Bake Oven over the years (see Weird History Food's video) as tastes in food change, safety concerns have increased, and the technology it was originally based around (the incandescent light bulb) has been phased out.
Hello Townsend clan members! Greeting from Missouri. I have only been watching your fascinating channel for about 6 months but I love the content you folks produce. I am an avid history buff and am very interested in how humans have adapted and innovated with food, cooking methods, food preservation methods and all the clever hardware being used through the years to prepare meals. I want to remind all your viewers that the techniques you teach us are just as valid today as they were then. There are wars being waged all over the globe and the human beings involved often lose all of the modern conveniences we take for granted when preserving and cooking food. They are reverting to these older methods to stay alive in war torn cities and towns. Keep up the good work, Townsends!
Eh, GTA6 is going to be an overhyped title. Calling it now - it's going to be heavily reliant on the online gaming and microtransaction aspect (cosmetics and in-game cash), minimal story, nice graphics and physics. I'm expecting a shiny but soulless game
My gramdparents up through my early life used to have a big fryer and a grill outside, the inside has the sink and appliances but the real cooking went on outdoors!
@@ButmunkieOG In Finland we had the problem of winters being very cold. Keeping warmth in means fires inside. We had cast iron cooking stoves and the wall behind the cast iron stove would be laid so it contained flues to lead the smoke through a longer path, heating up the masonry behind the stove to save every last bit of warmth you could before it left out the chimney. There would be a bypass flue for summertime to lead smoke directly to the chimney because you had the opposite problem in summer. This was called a heat retention wall.
@@1873Winchester That's very cool! You have to love the ingenious ways we come up with low tech solutions. I would say in Finland's case the increased fire hazard is more than worth the heating :D
Hearing you say East Anglia really got my attention as that's where I'm from! I much prefer cooking the old fashioned way over modern ways, the old ways are just so much more comforting.
Fantastic overview of the timeline of cooking technologies! Too true about cooking less and less! Wonderful work and much thanks to all the Townsends Team! 😃✨
This is a great video. I learned so much! Didn’t know that I’ve been cooking on a stew stove for the past thirty years and gave me a more in depth understanding of cooking interpretation.
My great grand mother still used the old wood fired cooking stove when I was a kid. My grandpa has since inherited it. That stove has been around since my great grandmother was a child. She made some extremely good foods on that stove.
In Howl's Moving Castle there is a huge walk in fireplace. A very small fire is burning on one side and a rocking chair on the other side. So you can sit inside the walk in fireplace and enjoy the heat. There is also a raised hearth for cooking. Very similar to the one in John's kitchen.
We had a major power outage across the south a few years ago a giant ice storm that took out power for up to a week or 2 we hunted and made stews to cook in our fireplace it was a rough and cold time but strangely also very comforting cooking with ur family at a fireplace that you hunted the meat to put in. If only I had the knowledge today that iv learned from this channel about preservation of eggs and such we would have been feasting a lot better
My parents both grew up with wood burning stoves back in the 20's and 30's. Hard to imagine how much cooking changed even over the course of their lifetimes!
A superb presentation of our past times cooking means. I grew up with much of these methods of the 18th and 19th century, as a small child and when visiting my grandparents. I recall exactly the open fireplace cooking in their Lounge room, and a cast iron fire/oven in the Kitchen, my parents had what was called a slow combustion stove in the kitchen which was wood stoked and hot plate above and an oven off to one side and a water reservoir on the other. All great memories of off our past times as we age in the 21st century. Thank you
Your video was informative, interesting, and brought back long forgotten memories of getting to visit a historical/pioneer village as a kid in school. Thank you for doing what you do.
@Townsends I love this summary of western medieval cooking evolution to present day. You have no idea how much i shade your vids to help my group... from the simplest cooking to the exquisite.. this has been the best by far.
Then you add pre-industry crops like heirloom vegetables, and you find yourself in the 16th century. Funny how these options are considered more expensive, huh?
I've always appreciated how much this channel goes into detail about the importance of cooktops and heat surfaces. And how much that affects the types of dishes that get made. It sure makes one appreciate one's big stainless pots and pans and fancy electric and gas ranges!
I'm 34 yo. And when I was little my Portuguese grandma had a standing hearth almost exactly like John's. By the time I was born she used it mostly for baking bread or other speciality meals. But when my parents were young that's all they had. My aunt inherited the house and was going to have it closed up. But then the recession hit and wood from their property was cheaper than electricity. So she kept it. She uses it for bread and special dishes now too.
As someone who first discovered you due to your 16mm film channel, I can't help but see all the beautiful video you've included in this video. it feels more like a film than a video.
Depending on where I've lived, I have gone back and forth between gas and electric ranges. There's a significant adjustment to heat control between the two, and some difference of types of cooking that can be done. But there is such a great difference between any modern range and the cooking equipment of the days of yore. There must be some lingering genetic memory that makes us make a campfire and cook on it now and then.
My grandmother had a hundred year old wood stove in her kitchen and she used to bake in it quite regularly. I wished I'd learned how to use it, as we just holidayed at an old home in New Zealand that had a very similar unit. I managed to get the firebox going long enough to cook on the stove (and get the water in the heater hot) but not enough to bake in it.
Beautiful video, as always. It really saddens me to see how people cook less with each passing year. Thanks again for all your lessons and little bits of insight here and there. God bless the Townsends team. 🙏🏻
You guys are one of my favorite channels. Thank you for being one of the most hard working, and authentic channels :) My day is made whenever you post a video that shows me the true definition of passion.
I lived in a house in Massachusetts that still had the original cooking fireplace that had survived since the early 1800's. It was about 5 feet high and 6 feet wide, had two small ovens, a grate and a pivoting arm. I baked bread, both yeast and quick, and made lentil and other stews in it. We used it for heat as well. I was only 20 years old so not an experienced cook but wouldn't I love to have access to that wonderful fireplace now at 68! Very interesting video, thank you.
I am so happy to have memories of my great uncle’s housekeeper cooking and baking with a wood fuel stove. It had the hot water reservoir to the back. They had a hand pump at the kitchen sink and yes, an outhouse. Uncle Charlie lived back the lane behind our property that sat on a main road into the city of Johnstown, PA. We moved from there to Ohio in 1966 when I was 7. And, that was the best bread I’ve ever ate.
This seems like food history at its core. It looks at the technology and food sources available, and explains how it leads to where we are today. This is awesome, and hard to come by.
I remember the outdoor oven from a trip to a roman castellum at the Limes. The brick oven, where the wood is being scraped out is a childhood memory. My grandfather built it for baking bread. My aunt still used into the late 80ies. All the small villages around still have that baking house but it is only occasionally used.
G'day all. We have it easy now days even when it comes to the basics of survival. I bought a camping cook set up for 60 $ Australian. All aluminium which isn't great but I wasn't shelling out for titanium, for something I would use only every so often. It had a handle that can grip all the bowls and plate/frypan. a largeish bowl a bowl that was smaller and the pan, a windbreak and small alcohol stove. All the bowls and plate nest with the cooker inside. You can also use the cooker stand as a twig stove. Because they nest you can use them as camp ovens under coals. Boil, fry, bake all in a package the size of a largish bowl. I started watching this channel for simple recipes i could make camping, So far I have been hard pressed to pick from the many, I could make that don't need ingredients from a fridge. thanks for the work.
As a little kid, back in the 1960's we lived in a farmhouse with a cast iron wood stove with an oven and a water jacket. We also had a cistern pump in the kitchen. The house was built in 1853 and had only two modern up grades electric and a telephone. As a matter-of-fact we still had to use the outhouse. We also had a summer kitchen for cooking maple sap down in the spring.
This makes me, as someone with a pretty severe chronic illness and intimate experience trying to cook on an 1800s cast iron stove, so appreciative of modern applicances and half ready made food. Literally got a micrwave like half a year ago and I will never go back. Yet I always feel so enamoured by historical food, and exhausted at the thought of the labour.
My friend's home in South Wales UK had one of those recessed open fireplaces -- the cottage was hundreds of years old. The walls were over 3 foot thick.
Watching from South East England. Great video. We have a 6' x 5' fireplace in our home but it has a pot belly stove in the middle. We love cooking stews, curry's, chilli & slow cooked meats on it in the winter. We couldn't imagine life without a fire but with environmental laws I don't know for how much longer.
I am so thankful for Townsends…I have watched for years, and it is interesting and educational on its own, but in this time period and volatile political climate, it is also a place to go to find peace and escape from the constant stress and worry about all that is happening in our country. Thank you! Louise J.
If you want to see good examples of the built-in ovens in the wall of a kitchen, visit the restored Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill Ky. (7 miles northeast of Harrodsburg Ky). Well worth the trip to view early- to mid-19th century culture. This was a communal colony so they had "automated" some chores that the average person could not do, like the horse powered washing machine. Some of the restored buildings are amazing.
You should really read "The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything" by Ruth Goodman, she does a great job of talking about developments in cooking implements and home design based on the differences in different fuel types and how that also impacted the types of foods that could be cooked. Her work is focused on Great Britain but she also talks about how those changes were exported out throughout the empire. In particular the way she looks at probate records gives a great view into not just what was in the homes of the elite but in more humble homes as well because metal tools and implements were valuable so would tend to get mentioned and explicitly left to someone
Such a fascinating and wonderful topic, I always learn something new when I watch your videos! I never thought of the whys of a raised cook surface. Or a hood letting the smoke out. Necessity really is the mother of invention.
Kind sir, i enjoy all of your videos so much.
I wish that i was able to cook the dishes that you prepare. I'm a 74 year old man stuck in a nursing home in Texas.
So many of the dishes the you cook remind of my grandmother and mothers cooking. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, they would cook the most wonderful meals .
Now ,all I have are memories of years past .
Many times when I'm watching one of your videos ,tears come to my eyes as i think about my mother,and grandmother when I was but a wee little lad.
Thank you for each and every one of your uideos.😊
The image of you holding an Easy Bake Oven gives me serious doubts that I'm actually awake.
Lol!
I had to blink a few times and rub my eyes, too 😁
Sharp decline of a previously good channel
I, too, was seriously confused at first.
Thought this was a meme for a second.
This may seem off topic, but as someone with hearing difficulties, I greatly appreciate the volume and clarity in these videos. I don't have to turn on the subtitles to understand and enjoy them. Thank you. And this was great!
I think the clarity and the careful enunciation are key. I have sensitive hearing, and usually have to turn the volume on most videos way down. I have never had to do that for this channel, even if they are playing music. Whoever is in charge of the sound on this channel is doing an amazing job, Whoever is in charge of the sound on this channel is doing an amazing job, since they're able to make both of us happy.
This is especially appreciated, because the videos are top notch. I found this video in particular very engrossing.
I wonder if some folks in upcoming generations will have kitchens that look more like break rooms in offices, with just a microwave and a fridge and freezer. And maybe an external portal that is expressly for meal delivery services.
There are TV shows with a hundred times the budget that aren't as well shot and mixed and produced as Townsends. This channel really is a treat.
I fully agree!
This is no reason not to have subtitles. Please include them, thank you!
@@Hyanmensir Just go to settings and turn them on! problem solved.
Biggest thing the raised hearth did, was take the back-ache out of stooping in a fireplace!!
Probably a lot less dress fires too...
It probably kept you from being dizzy from long times of stooping.
@@RayF6126probably reduced the amount of ambient heat in the kitchen too. I would be sweating working with a huge fireplace.
@@Mistah_Boombastic_BiggieCheese the temperatures were fairly lower even in the 50's todays 40c weather was around 26 probably would be a bit colder still in the 18th century
Most of us sit at the fire to cook . Not stand . The standing kitchen is a pain .
A video over apartment living throughout the centuries would be interesting. Cooking, eating, how they were setup.
According to channels Tasting History and Toldinstone, many Romans lived in apartments, but they could not cook in them, so they ate fast food, what simple establishments prepared to take out.
Wondering now whether they had delivery.
@@MariaMartinez-researcher That... is an interesting thought. I mean there are portable foods. For example; pasties and such. But I wonder how complex that could actually get in a big city like Rome.
Thirty five years ago when I was in my mid thirties, I began dating a man who had spent a lot of time traveling in Europe. When he told me that they had high rise apartment buildings (at least 6-7 stories) in Spain, I thought he was teasing me. As a history lover, I had watched a lot of historical dramas and read historical fiction. I had never seen or read anything that suggested that there were apartment buildings for the average person. (I don’t include multistory residences which were parts of castles or palaces.). While I did get to see some of England, Wales and Ireland, I never saw any buildings such as he had seen. I would love to see a documentary on it and will look to see if any exist.
@@merk9569 9 stories in ancient Rome. Look up "insula (building)"
In America, what we see as apartments didn't come into existence until the mid 19th century. More so the early 20th.
In addition to the water jacket, my stove had drying racks so if you came in with wet small items you could warm or dry them. Great for frozen socks and gloves.
We had a wood stove in the house I grew up in. In winter my mum would warm up our pjs in front of it. Nothing cosier.
We see examples of ancient Roman "stew stoves" as Jon describes along outdoor boulevards. This is how ancient Roman street food was generally cooked.
Romans were on to something. Their bakeries often times were next to the baths. They used the heat from the bakery to heat the water in the neighboring baths. Pretty clever idea, reduced firewood consumption.
The raised hearth must have reduced back pain by 80%.
As a little kid in 90' I still remember there was cast iron stove when my family moved in to the old apartament.
When I was a kid my grandmother had a coal stove (she didn't have any coal, she burnt trash in it). She also used to make what we called 'dishwater soup' which was one peeled potato, one peeled oniion, one beet (all whole, nothing cut up) in a pot with 2 gallons of water. If you were lucky you got the potato. She also gave my father 2 left shoes for his birthday that she picked up for $0.50. She said ' you might walk a little funny but what do you want for $0.50'. I have a feeling grandma missed the 'end of the depression notice'. 100% true. Times were simpler, not necessarily more comfortable.
The thumbnail for this video is perfection
Don’t have Jon holding “Easy Oven” in my bingo card
They changed it :(
@@ryanambsdorf2859 sad
Me neither. It looks like a super chicken?
@@junglechick13super chicken?😂😂😂
The precursor to the easy bake oven was a mini cast iron stove. Toy versions were first created in the mid 19th century. Unfortunately, children were seriously injured and killed using the working models.
Ironically with our exceptionally convenient gas and electric hobs etc., in the UK one of the most desirable things for a country house is an Aga - the cast iron range cooker that's the direct descendant of the earliest metal wood stoves.
The raised hearth looks like my ideal outdoor kitchen lol
It works ok . I cook that way most of the year.
I was 27 when we bought our home and it came with a 1941 chambers stove. They were supposed to take it but they were unable to move it. So I was upset by it and ate fast food and microwave meals for a couple weeks then I decided to learn it. omg it's amazing and I love ot so much. Its double Insulated with with a griddle, broiler, and a well. It makes me so happy and I learned to cook, really cook, on it. Over 20 years now. When we cook at others homes and spaces we can tell the amazing difference of the simple device we have vs even the best technology solves. It's helped Andy desire to learn about older cooking adlifestyles and how to implement them into ours. This was a great video
So lucky.
The Easy-Bake Oven was introduced in 1963 by Kenner. The original used a pair of ordinary incandescent light bulbs as a heat source; so our ancestors had it rough. By 1997, more than 16 million Easy-Bake Ovens had been sold.
I do so enjoy learning ancient history --- don't you?
I had that!!! I was born in late1960 and God bless my dad for eating my concoctions 😂
@@KimtheElder Don't you miss the OLD commercials from the 60's and 70's?
@KimtheElder 😂😂I'm 62 ,my mom tried all of mine 😂
😂 It’s weird the easy bake oven is apart of the evolution of cooking at home
I'm thinking they would not work that well with a LED replacement bulb... :)
An interesting variant is the tile stove. Basically a masonry oven with small fire in it. Useful in winter as the masonry would retain the heat and help warm the house at night.
It's interesting how we've separated heat for cooking from heat for the residence, when for most of history it's been the same source for both.
Even in the 1950s, many people in rural North America didn't have power in their homes. Wood stoves, or cooking over fire was the only way people could prepare meals. Drying and canning were also essential for food preparation. Long ago, learning to cook was essential for survival. There were no fast food outlets around back then. This was very interesting. Cheers!
If you've ever read Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, there's a long description of the kinds of canning work done in the Hill Country of Texas, typically by women, when Johnson was young. It was brutally hard.
Interestingly canning (as we understand it today, a sealed, pasteurized, shelf stable product that can last several years) is only just around 200 years old itself. Having done home canning, I can attest that it is difficult work especially when canning hundreds of quarts in a day or two. It's definitely easier with more people.
"With our modern kitchens we cook less and less." I got a good chuckle out of that one! I can't help but think of the commercials I'm seeing lately (I won't mention the brand!) for a certain pre-prepared meal-in-a-box with a push-button robo-oven that the consumer needs very little effort on their part to use.
"OK," I say to myself, "And just WHAT are you gonna do if there's a power failure?" Hey, if all else fails I've got my sterno stove and last-resort fireplace. It's wouldn't be fun but I'd manage.
Great show Jon! And a FAST 16 minutes!
I would think that most of the rich/nobility would be in the same situation as some modern people if they didn't have someone to cook for them.
@@joeys4759 And you could very well be right!
Yes, exactly. Even the ease of technology has, in many ways increased our dependence on many things. If for some reason our modern appliances became unusable, how many of us would still be able to continue on with our lives?....
@@campsiteministries Good question! My guess is country folk might get on all right, but city dwellers and even suburbanites would be in a LOT of trouble. Modern society has such a level of sophistication now pulling the rug out from under it would cause total chaos. Not pretty.
@wayneantoniazzi2706 Now is the time to encourage whoever is willing to pull their heads out of the sand and have ears to hear and eyes to see, (and willing to learn).
The farm my folks retired to had a big Kalamazoo wood stove with a plate/food warmer box on top, four lids, with one being a three ring, 9" one, a stove with a dial heat indicator on the door and a water heater on the right side. Although in perfect shape and beautiful with its white and blue enamel decorations, my Mom had always cooked on a gas stove and disliked all the fuss involved with burning wood. So the stove went in the barn and we got a bottle gas stove from Sears...Dad had to install a radiator in the kitchen so it wouldn't get cold in winter...
Yes, I'd like to see a video on the Kalamazoo stove: "Direct to you from Kalamazoo". Those things were EVERYWHERE!
In Finland we never really had a lack of firewood, so we never really translated into gas ovens, straight to electric ones. Also the cooking appliances had to double up as heaters, so the typical kitchen stove until the 1950's maybe had a iron cover and separate oven (usually water tank too) but otherwise the stove was made of bricks, so the stove also kept the heat at least for a while to keep the kitchen nice and warm. Factory-made versions had a metal frame around the brickwork, also all-brick versions custom made by a mason were widely used. Sometimes connected to a larger fireplace or baking oven.
I grew up in an old house in rural Australia. We had an old wood fired stove/oven that also heated the water for the hot water system. It was great in winter. It would warm the front rooms of the house, heat the water and be the cooking place. Cooking cakes was a bit hit and miss because there was no way to regulate the heat other than add more wood or light it early in the day to cook a cake in the evening. Sometimes the water was so hot you could hear bubbling in the pipes. We were taught from a young age to be extra careful when turning on the hot water taps. Wood stoves are a lot of work to maintain and there is always a fine layer of soot building up somewhere.
Just want to thank you for making interesting videos for such a long time. That recent onion pie with the apples and hard-boiled eggs was intriguing. Just downloaded this video to watch later offline so I just wanted to give you a general appreciation.
I'll never think of "Hickory Smoked" anything, the same way again. Wonderfully eye-opening, as always.
Would love to see a comparison video making the same recipe with modern vs historic equipment and how the flavor/cooking experience changes
This was a great episode, with information presented differently than I have heard it before. Thank you, Jon, for being willing to do all that research and share it with us. You deserve your success.
The remarkable thing about the thumbnail is that the same story has played out with the Easy Bake Oven over the years (see Weird History Food's video) as tastes in food change, safety concerns have increased, and the technology it was originally based around (the incandescent light bulb) has been phased out.
I love these summaries. Hopefully it's a promise of more deep dives into these cooking methods.
Hello Townsend clan members! Greeting from Missouri. I have only been watching your fascinating channel for about 6 months but I love the content you folks produce. I am an avid history buff and am very interested in how humans have adapted and innovated with food, cooking methods, food preservation methods and all the clever hardware being used through the years to prepare meals. I want to remind all your viewers that the techniques you teach us are just as valid today as they were then. There are wars being waged all over the globe and the human beings involved often lose all of the modern conveniences we take for granted when preserving and cooking food. They are reverting to these older methods to stay alive in war torn cities and towns. Keep up the good work, Townsends!
We got Townsends holding an easy bake oven before GTA6
What an interest gap. I'm right there with ya man.
Eh, GTA6 is going to be an overhyped title.
Calling it now - it's going to be heavily reliant on the online gaming and microtransaction aspect (cosmetics and in-game cash), minimal story, nice graphics and physics.
I'm expecting a shiny but soulless game
@@Your-Least-Favorite-Stranger”shiny but soulless” is a great way to describe many modern day titles. Honestly wouldn’t be surprised.
I think that might be the Roach Dogg's son.
In the Deep South, we just always had an outdoor cooking shack.
My gramdparents up through my early life used to have a big fryer and a grill outside, the inside has the sink and appliances but the real cooking went on outdoors!
Keeps the fire on the outside of the house where it belongs :)
@@ButmunkieOG In Finland we had the problem of winters being very cold. Keeping warmth in means fires inside. We had cast iron cooking stoves and the wall behind the cast iron stove would be laid so it contained flues to lead the smoke through a longer path, heating up the masonry behind the stove to save every last bit of warmth you could before it left out the chimney. There would be a bypass flue for summertime to lead smoke directly to the chimney because you had the opposite problem in summer. This was called a heat retention wall.
@@1873Winchester That's very cool! You have to love the ingenious ways we come up with low tech solutions. I would say in Finland's case the increased fire hazard is more than worth the heating :D
Hearing you say East Anglia really got my attention as that's where I'm from!
I much prefer cooking the old fashioned way over modern ways, the old ways are just so much more comforting.
REALLY enjoyed this video.
Albion's Seed is a great book. So much useful information about early N. America.
I look forward to every week’s episode! This was great.
In Portugal its still tradition in Rural areas to have an open walk in fireplace like 02:00. We still smoke "chouriços and Linguiças" in them.
We also had, in older more isolated areas, big farms where there was a big oven house.
Thanks for so meaningful and valuable video as always ❤❤❤
Absolutely love your content. You guys are awesome.
Fantastic overview of the timeline of cooking technologies! Too true about cooking less and less! Wonderful work and much thanks to all the Townsends Team! 😃✨
This is a great video. I learned so much! Didn’t know that I’ve been cooking on a stew stove for the past thirty years and gave me a more in depth understanding of cooking interpretation.
My great grand mother still used the old wood fired cooking stove when I was a kid. My grandpa has since inherited it. That stove has been around since my great grandmother was a child. She made some extremely good foods on that stove.
In Howl's Moving Castle there is a huge walk in fireplace. A very small fire is burning on one side and a rocking chair on the other side. So you can sit inside the walk in fireplace and enjoy the heat.
There is also a raised hearth for cooking. Very similar to the one in John's kitchen.
Thanks Jon, always enjoy these glimpses into the past. ❤
We had a major power outage across the south a few years ago a giant ice storm that took out power for up to a week or 2 we hunted and made stews to cook in our fireplace it was a rough and cold time but strangely also very comforting cooking with ur family at a fireplace that you hunted the meat to put in. If only I had the knowledge today that iv learned from this channel about preservation of eggs and such we would have been feasting a lot better
Thanks Townsends. Your team of excellent people provide us with fantastic videos after another.
Another great video Townsends
My parents both grew up with wood burning stoves back in the 20's and 30's. Hard to imagine how much cooking changed even over the course of their lifetimes!
A superb presentation of our past times cooking means.
I grew up with much of these methods of the 18th and 19th century, as a small child and when visiting my grandparents. I recall exactly the open fireplace cooking in their Lounge room, and a cast iron fire/oven in the Kitchen, my parents had what was called a slow combustion stove in the kitchen which was wood stoked and hot plate above and an oven off to one side and a water reservoir on the other.
All great memories of off our past times as we age in the 21st century.
Thank you
Really cool, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Jon , great video and information . I love your raised hearth for cooking .
Love that thoughtful video. Thanks for it❣
Your video was informative, interesting, and brought back long forgotten memories of getting to visit a historical/pioneer village as a kid in school. Thank you for doing what you do.
I often watch these videos just before bed, they're so relaxing!
Outstanding video! What a great retrospective of the evolution of the kitchen!
@Townsends I love this summary of western medieval cooking evolution to present day.
You have no idea how much i shade your vids to help my group... from the simplest cooking to the exquisite.. this has been the best by far.
Free range, organic, sourced locally, farm to table, eating according to the seasons. They sure were 18th century foodies.
Then you add pre-industry crops like heirloom vegetables, and you find yourself in the 16th century.
Funny how these options are considered more expensive, huh?
And dying in Famines
@terrylambert8149 they did not have a lot of choice
I’m glad we have choices now
yes now eat it every day and eating food becomes a chore not a joy
I've always appreciated how much this channel goes into detail about the importance of cooktops and heat surfaces. And how much that affects the types of dishes that get made.
It sure makes one appreciate one's big stainless pots and pans and fancy electric and gas ranges!
I'm 34 yo. And when I was little my Portuguese grandma had a standing hearth almost exactly like John's. By the time I was born she used it mostly for baking bread or other speciality meals. But when my parents were young that's all they had. My aunt inherited the house and was going to have it closed up. But then the recession hit and wood from their property was cheaper than electricity. So she kept it. She uses it for bread and special dishes now too.
Why close it even if you only use it sometimes.
As someone who first discovered you due to your 16mm film channel, I can't help but see all the beautiful video you've included in this video. it feels more like a film than a video.
Thanks John! This channel makes such a difference in my day. I appreciate you taking the time to cover all these diverse topics.
Depending on where I've lived, I have gone back and forth between gas and electric ranges. There's a significant adjustment to heat control between the two, and some difference of types of cooking that can be done. But there is such a great difference between any modern range and the cooking equipment of the days of yore.
There must be some lingering genetic memory that makes us make a campfire and cook on it now and then.
Exceptionally well done! Informative, educational and fascinating!
My grandmother had a hundred year old wood stove in her kitchen and she used to bake in it quite regularly. I wished I'd learned how to use it, as we just holidayed at an old home in New Zealand that had a very similar unit. I managed to get the firebox going long enough to cook on the stove (and get the water in the heater hot) but not enough to bake in it.
This channel is like a warm hug, Thanks.
Beautiful video, as always. It really saddens me to see how people cook less with each passing year. Thanks again for all your lessons and little bits of insight here and there. God bless the Townsends team. 🙏🏻
You guys are one of my favorite channels. Thank you for being one of the most hard working, and authentic channels :) My day is made whenever you post a video that shows me the true definition of passion.
I lived in a house in Massachusetts that still had the original cooking fireplace that had survived since the early 1800's. It was about 5 feet high and 6 feet wide, had two small ovens, a grate and a pivoting arm. I baked bread, both yeast and quick, and made lentil and other stews in it. We used it for heat as well. I was only 20 years old so not an experienced cook but wouldn't I love to have access to that wonderful fireplace now at 68! Very interesting video, thank you.
West midlands in the UK here 👋🏾
We have a "Heartland Oval" wood cook stove !!! Like you described with oven and water jacket !!!!!
I love this channel. Thank you for who you are and what you do
Gosh I love this channel
Thanks for sharing with us Jon. This was so interesting and all comes back to learning the process to COOK< BAKE< BOIL
Loved this deep dive! More, please!
I am so happy to have memories of my great uncle’s housekeeper cooking and baking with a wood fuel stove. It had the hot water reservoir to the back. They had a hand pump at the kitchen sink and yes, an outhouse. Uncle Charlie lived back the lane behind our property that sat on a main road into the city of Johnstown, PA. We moved from there to Ohio in 1966 when I was 7. And, that was the best bread I’ve ever ate.
This seems like food history at its core. It looks at the technology and food sources available, and explains how it leads to where we are today. This is awesome, and hard to come by.
I remember the outdoor oven from a trip to a roman castellum at the Limes. The brick oven, where the wood is being scraped out is a childhood memory. My grandfather built it for baking bread. My aunt still used into the late 80ies. All the small villages around still have that baking house but it is only occasionally used.
This is one of the most informative episodes yet! Thanks John!
G'day all. We have it easy now days even when it comes to the basics of survival. I bought a camping cook set up for 60 $ Australian. All aluminium which isn't great but I wasn't shelling out for titanium, for something I would use only every so often.
It had a handle that can grip all the bowls and plate/frypan. a largeish bowl a bowl that was smaller and the pan, a windbreak and small alcohol stove. All the bowls and plate nest with the cooker inside. You can also use the cooker stand as a twig stove.
Because they nest you can use them as camp ovens under coals. Boil, fry, bake all in a package the size of a largish bowl.
I started watching this channel for simple recipes i could make camping, So far I have been hard pressed to pick from the many, I could make that don't need ingredients from a fridge.
thanks for the work.
One of your best videos. The research, script, presentation and production made this video very interesting and informative.
Learning history always invokes intense gratitude in me for the blessings I have today. Thanks, Townsends!
What a brilliant historical piece. Very well done. You cover a facet of history that few do and you do it so well. My compliments
Hampton Court palace still has stew stoves and large fire places with spits in front. Seperate rooms have wafer making places, etc.
I love this channel so much. I love it.
As a little kid, back in the 1960's we lived in a farmhouse with a cast iron wood stove with an oven and a water jacket. We also had a cistern pump in the kitchen. The house was built in 1853 and had only two modern up grades electric and a telephone. As a matter-of-fact we still had to use the outhouse. We also had a summer kitchen for cooking maple sap down in the spring.
I absolutely love this channel. So much historical information and recipes. And I still want to make it up to the store.
This makes me, as someone with a pretty severe chronic illness and intimate experience trying to cook on an 1800s cast iron stove, so appreciative of modern applicances and half ready made food. Literally got a micrwave like half a year ago and I will never go back. Yet I always feel so enamoured by historical food, and exhausted at the thought of the labour.
Great video as always
Excellent video! 😊
Absolutely fascinating, and brilliantly presented. Thank you! 👌👌👌
My friend's home in South Wales UK had one of those recessed open fireplaces -- the cottage was hundreds of years old. The walls were over 3 foot thick.
Watching from South East England. Great video. We have a 6' x 5' fireplace in our home but it has a pot belly stove in the middle. We love cooking stews, curry's, chilli & slow cooked meats on it in the winter.
We couldn't imagine life without a fire but with environmental laws I don't know for how much longer.
I am so thankful for Townsends…I have watched for years, and it is interesting and educational on its own, but in this time period and volatile political climate, it is also a place to go to find peace and escape from the constant stress and worry about all that is happening in our country. Thank you! Louise J.
Truly one of the best channels ever created. Its my go to for comfort and history ❤
This was really interesting. Thanks so much for sharing this little slice of history!
Hi Folks, I really found this article fascinating. Thank you so much!- Brent,VT
If you want to see good examples of the built-in ovens in the wall of a kitchen, visit the restored Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill Ky. (7 miles northeast of Harrodsburg Ky). Well worth the trip to view early- to mid-19th century culture. This was a communal colony so they had "automated" some chores that the average person could not do, like the horse powered washing machine. Some of the restored buildings are amazing.
You should really read "The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything" by Ruth Goodman, she does a great job of talking about developments in cooking implements and home design based on the differences in different fuel types and how that also impacted the types of foods that could be cooked. Her work is focused on Great Britain but she also talks about how those changes were exported out throughout the empire.
In particular the way she looks at probate records gives a great view into not just what was in the homes of the elite but in more humble homes as well because metal tools and implements were valuable so would tend to get mentioned and explicitly left to someone
I thought I had read all of her books but I missed this one. She is marvelous. The farmvids are incredible.
John, so true on your final comment. Sad to see society as a whole loosing traction of the use of many skill sets that aren’t that long past.
This was fantastic!
This was a great video. Townsend you're on point more than ever
this is supreme content, thank you for it
Such a fascinating and wonderful topic, I always learn something new when I watch your videos!
I never thought of the whys of a raised cook surface. Or a hood letting the smoke out. Necessity really is the mother of invention.