Growing up, my older sister used to do that to me all the time. Here, taste this it's awful! You gotta taste this! After the first time, I'd just give her the stink eye and say no. I still have no clue why she still does it today and if I'm around... I say NO!!!
I am reminded of Jeff Foxworthy's comedy skit about the courtesy sniff. Here, you have the courtesy taste. The third guy now has a courtesy taste token that he can cash in with Jon at any given time.
I love how universal it is for guys when they taste/smell something gross to INSTANTLY need to share it and get their friends to also experience it. There is some sort of primal joy watching your friend also be disgusted.
“Maybe we got the recipe wrong, maybe their taste buds were different” Or maybe you just discovered why people refused to eat it more than three times a week!
@@BluJean6692 I agree. You would have gotten scramble egg pieces. Totally different flavor. Plus, light and gentle stirring so the crab pieces do not break up so bad. They screwed this recipe up badly. They should have been lumps of crab and small pieces of egg.
There is nothing worse than badly cooked seafood. I rarely make it at home, because like white fish it is easy to mess up, and it isn’t a cheap thing to mess up.
@@jurissilins8644 yeah, back when lobster was considered trash food they boiled huge vats of them and just ground them up, shells and all, as food for prisoners. They did it bc lobsters were absolutely everywhere at the time; I just wish lobsters were as common now xD
With how easy is today to get your hands on all kinds of food you`ll think sea food will be mostly cheap with few excepciones and idk why people think shelves or crabs are food for the rich when they are easily mass produced. Like for example my country has a big part of it like the whole east border is just beaches and sea right. So finding shelves in buckets in just a day is quite normal yet if you go to a bistro at the beach they`ll charge you almost as much as for a beef stake or something like that and it just doesnt make sense. So i never payed for a restaurant food that i know i can get for cheap easily cuz its all based on making the client believe the lie. If im eating at a place i`ll pick the stuff i dont know cuz its new to me or its rare in my country
I believe there was a pickled fish recipe that Ryan ate rather a lot of, but that Jon found pretty repulsive. The next day when Jon found out that Ryan had survived the night and felt fine he was rather surprised.
@@TheBeanHome When did he say he didn't like coffee? I remember him doing a ideo on a dish where it was eggs mixed with coffee and he hated it, but as for coffee by itself I don't recall him ever saying he dislikes it.
You also have to keep in mind that shellfish expires quickly if it isnt kept alive or frozen, and they probably wouldnt be getting nice fresh shellfish.
@@arthas640 Until widespread refrigeration seafood was mostly a costal/extremely wealthy thing. There are a few good documentaries and essays explaining how trans-continental rail/canning/nascent refrigeration tech all came together to make lobster into a fancy food in the American (now global) psyche.
@@DAndyLord It's still just a big bottom-feeding sea bug that tastes like a sea bug. I don't get it. It's like people use Lobster as an excuse just eat a ton of butter the most expensive way possible. Fish is so much better and actually has variety. All sea bugs taste roughly the same.
Lmfaooo I loved the reaction at 8:40 it's like he's always so cheerful and he finally broke character because the dish was so poorly constructed in the recipe lmao. He knew he was about to eat some bullshit.
That’s the reaction of people who have tried something horrible and want their friend to try and find their reaction absolutely hilarious, its also almost a universal reaction as well and absolutely hilarious at that
Fun fact: It was used a narcotic in an open prison where the prisoners where allowed to order their own provisions. The prison staff couldn't work out why everyone was ordering so much nutmeg! It's allegedly hallucinogenic (I've never personally tried it) in high concentrations.
@@richbuilds_com it’s a really bad hallucinogen in my experience, gives you this terrible grinding headache inducing high when you’re awake and when you sleep it gives you crazy abstract dreams, in my experience anyway. Still the best spice out there though.
My friend's parents were french acadians and when they went to school the poor kids had lobster rolls for lunch and the rich kids got baloney sandwiches on white bread.
Lobsters were considered cockroaches of the sea and often fed to prisoners as a very cheap meal, until they became a delicacy by WW2. The School thought they were being slick.
I love bologna. Stuff is great fried and goes well with an egg between some bread. I think the real lesson here is that the value of food is arbitrary and ever changing. What's garbage to one person is a delicacy to another.
Precisely, get rid of the nutmeg and I’m sure this dish would be more than palatable. I would also sub out the tinned anchovies for some “white fish” of some sort, although an oily fish may be a better fit for others tastes. But I really do think the admission of nutmeg caused this dish to come in subpar.
@@brandonswitzer6957 Well in the nutmeg's defense, it's meant to be used sparingly bcuz its so pungent. Pretty sure a light dash would've been more than sufficient. This dude was piling it on with a grater like it was friggin' parmesan cheese! 🤦♂️
It could be a thickener; they put the egg with the wine and that was wrong; The recipe should be wine in crab meat, egg in bread crumbs and use the egg/breadcrumbs to thicken the wine/crabmeat. It should be an American gravy like mix to pour over biscuits. It should be wonderful.
I remember that I was once told certain fish here in Germany was poor men's food. Not only on the coast, but also along the rivers. Especially salmon and eel, things everyone could get by catching it himself as any game was considered property of the regional lords, early, counts etc. Or not available in the towns and cities back then. Hard to imagine that salmon was poor men's food on the one hand or that you could catch anything edible from the Rhine. A few years ago if you would catch anything you would have been worries about glowing in the dark after eating it.
amazing how so many foods from over a hundred years ago that were originally " poor people foods" are now considered foods for wealthier people. lobster, crab, clams, salmon, and even cavier were all foods that people hated for how cheap and common they were , but now people can't get enough of it.
@@grzegorzbrzeczyszykiewic3338 At the same time. There were former "upper class" foods that have become cheap foods in modern times. Pineapples, bananas, chicken, white bread, and pasta.
@@LukeL007 Hey, as a 'bro' you are obligated to one 'courtesy sniff' when it comes to something awful that might be presented to you by a fellow bro. 😁
@@trygveskogsholm5963 Cooked crab by itself + butter is amazing. But it can also be eaten with things other than butter. Chinese king crab with ginger and scallions is tasty. I don't know what's going on with the nutmeg and anchovies in this dish though.
The fact that Mike keeps tasting it and trying to think of how he can make it taste good really shows how great of a chef he is. I really appreciate that guy and what he has to say.
Being from Baltimore, and knowing my way around a crab, this was a primitive recipe for crab cakes. They have all the right ingredients, but they should have used WAY less liquid and WAY more breadcrumbs to form a cake for frying in the pan over the fire. I'm sure they used pasteurized crab as well which doesn't have a great flavor. Back to the drawing board and think cod cake instead of stew. It'll come out way better!
As a cook of 10 years at 29. I have a decent amount of experience and I definitely thought crab cakes too. Definitely less white wine and a lot more breadcrumb, otherwise it’s just a hot crab salad type of situation
I often come back to watch this video solely because the opening never fails to have me in absolute stitches. That undignified *THWAP* as you see the crab stew go airborne and Jon trying to stay in character throughout it just never gets any less hilarious to me 🤣
The way John tries to hype himself up by stating he’s liked almost every single recipe is one of the funniest body language betrayals. It was like he knew it would taste foul.
@@LuisAldamiz yeah, they lost me there too. Thanks, but no thanks. I think maybe some of these kinds of things were maybe acquired tastes and people just trying to make due with what they had access to. Maybe it would be better without the anchovies?
@@alexanderkupke920 - I was taught that "anchovies are the ham of the sea", what means like the greatest thing outside of land, because in land that's Iberian ham. Also the taste somewhat similar. But, unlike ham, I would not use them for anything. Also nutmeg is for sweets, omelettes and backpain, never heard of nutmeg with seafood.
The cook doesn't have to feel bad at all... this wasn't his fault. He did his best and followed the recipe. That music cutting off was the funniest thing on this channel so far. 🤣
Crazy theory: maybe the alcohol of the wine hadn't been completely burnt off? I imagine that the egg yolk would solidify pretty quickly, perhaps thus "trapping" the wine, causing the "yuck!" effect? Maybe it'd be better to first add crab and bread into the frying pan, then add the wine, burn off the alcohol, and then stir in the egg yolk? Just my tuppenceworth. 😎
@@danielvanr.8681 I'd say possibly even cutting the "beloved" nutmeg all together, replacing wine with some cream or milk and some salt maybe with the crab cooked more first? Making it more like kedgery that way a very nice dish by the 19th century (thank you for that recipe btw Mrs. Crocumb!)
@@Rach1313 Honestly I'm a fan of just boiling in salt water then adding salt, pepper and some citrus etc and I'm happy. Hell, it doesn't even need citrus or pepper lol :)
Me in the 18th Century: _"Crab, Lobster? SURE! Just boil it and give me some salt, butter, and garlic! I'll be happy!"_ Every noble within a mile: _"I sense a disturbance in my purse..."_
The problem could be that the legs were stewed. Crab only needs to be cooked very briefly, and should never be cooked twice, or it'll be ruined. If you overcook crab, it gets a strong, fishy, nasty flavor and smell. It sounds like whoever made this recipe just had no idea how to cook crab, and didn't know how to cook it to be palatable.
@@MrAsaqe How so? You can do all this today with no refrigeration and not overcook the shellfish. Why is refrigeration needed? For this recipe, you kill the animal, remove the meat, and cook.
One of my favorite stories about lobster comes from a tour guide in Boston. She told a story about how her dad was a lobster fisherman, and they were treated as poor because they often had to eat lobster. How the times have changed...
Yep, though of course that was also coming from a time when all seafood, especially shellfish, was still so plentiful and hadn't been _overfished_ yet!
When my mom was a little girl in the early 50s they had a lot of lobster for Lent -- because they were poor and it was cheap. It was considered "trash" even that recently!
It's still pretty cheap in places where it's harvested. You can buy good, fresh lobsters for 2-3 dollars a pound if you live near the coast of new england. And they'll be better than any you'll find in the supermarket.
The crab and lobster at the time was in clean waters. No plastics. No freak oil spills. No pollution. Wooo. If you could go back in time and freak out the locals by eating the headfat and guts. Wooo...so good. Screw the peasants. They were living like kings.
@@CallanElliott An open wood flame is VERY HOT. Most fire cooking is done either on a thermal mass like a rock, or clay oven, or on low coals. A google search and bare bones research tells me that for there to even be a flame from wood, the material must be at least 500 degrees. What do you think eggs do at 500 degrees? They don't cook, they curdle. The meat probably dissolved into a sludge of strange compounds. I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a nice pudding consistency with chunks of nicely cooked shellfish. Instead it became curdled egg and crustacean goop.
@@ramblinevilmushroom Did your research tell you how much of that heat is lost to the surrounding air, how much is transfered into the pan, how much heat is then lost by the pan, and finally how much of that heat actually gets into the food.
I had a dear friend from Maine who said her grandmother used to hide the lobster stew in the fridge when people came over. The recipe she showed me would go for, like, $39 in a restaurant today!
My grandfather (I'm also from Maine) wouldn't touch lobster for the same associations. "Our family didn't climb up from the ditch of poverty to eat garbage feeding ocean bugs" is a pretty close quote.
Interesting, I watch some historical channels about kitchen, mostly in medieval times and in XVIII century, and what I noticed is that most of the food that was really cheap then, now became really expensive. I love to watch such shows, thank you for making one!
My heart aches saying this, but i think the nutmeg is killing the flavour in this recipe. It just does not go well with seafood. Especially when mixed with anchovi wich is a natural flavour amplifier. Try the same recipe with a bit of garlic instead of nutmeg and i'm sure it will taste great. Garlic does a great job at enhancing seafood flavour!
Just had one of the biggest laughs I have had in weeks. Even a "fail" is a success on this channel. Love you guys and Michael is always a treat to see.
Having worked in supermarkets I have witnessed as much as half of the seafood seen displayed in the cases thrown out. That's why seafood is so expensive, and it's why our fisheries are being depleted. Almost all seafood has to come in frozen because quantities of fresh can't be kept for more than a couple of days. Oily fishes like Salmon (and trout-basically the same family) are not fish that freeze well and are shipped from a farm (or wild-caught, often flown in.) I think Salmon's popularity drives its sale in restaurants and in grocery but still so much is thrown away. The point is because there is such waste there is much markup. This causes seafood to be priced out of the diets of many families, which in turn leads to more waste and more mark up and depleted stock and then more thrown away etc., etc. The price of seafood also puts it out of reach of younger cooks who experiment with different foods. Many can afford to take a loss on a recipe that uses boneless, skinless, chicken breast at $4.99 per pound over a recipe that calls for Turbot at $12.99 per pound. In chain grocers, the price of seafood can even be exorbitant in coastal areas, especially tourist areas because many local fishermen have given way to larger corporate fleets (or sell exclusively to corporations) and aquaculture who seek higher markup for the sake of investor profits. Locals do however know where they can still get fresh fish for a reasonable cost. One thing I loved about living in Northern Virginia, along the Potomac, near the coast was the ability to pull up to a roadside convenience store and buy blue crab by the bushel almost as cheaply as I can buy peaches at the roadside stands in the Carolinas in season!
Yeah, there are very few fresh fish/meat counters left in the main supermarkets here in the UK and where they do have them, it's an incredibly overwhelming smell of fish that tells me it's way past its best! Not very appealing at all and it's why I tend to have to go frozen or tinned as an (almost) always fresher tasting option! As crazy as that sounds heh. I agree on the prices as well, for sure it is way of reach for most and eventually I probably won't be able to be as selective!
@@louisazraels7072 Yes, the very first time I tried it, I was in Mexico. They had grilled it and it was all rubbery! I thought that was normal for years until I got to try some really good tender lobster, so good!
"Maybe we did the recipe wrong, or maybe their taste buds were different from ours." Or maybe the reason they all hated crab and lobster so much was that they sucked at cooking it lol
I adore shellfish, but my cats don't care for it. If I give them a bit of shrimp or crab to taste, they sniff it and look at me like "Okay, Mom, not funny. How about some canned tuna?"
I'm guessing the anchovies that were mentioned were the salted and dried kind. If that's the case then that would be the one that will bring the necessary salty/savory flavor to the dish.
Reenactor from the Eastern Seaboard here (I live 15 minutes from Colonial Williamsburg) and I love your show! This recipe, in my opinion, failed because of several things: The type of crab has to be very specific for it to work. Atlantic blue-crab (I'm partial to Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab) is a very different taste to Snow Crab, Alaskan King Crab, etc. Also, fresh crab is vital to getting the flavor right. Crab meat that you can buy in the grocery store is sometimes "padded out" with pollock and other white fish to bulk it up, so that may also be an issue. The white wine would have different flavor, depending on whether sweet or dry, and that would make a huge difference for taste. More breadcrumbs! The egg yolk should not have been added with the wine, in my opinion, it should have been added after taking it off the fire, kind of like you make a bechamel sauce slowly and without scrambling to thicken. From experience, crab benefits from a thick sauce (or mayonnaise.) My husband and I love your show, please take these as constructive criticism from huge fans of historical cooking!
I suspect the wine. Any of those crabs are delicious in any preparation and all go with pepper and nutmeg. The only other ingredients are an egg yolk which to be fair could have been bad or an inappropriate wine for both shellfish and cooking.
I was thinking the same thing. When you cook mussels in a white wine sauce it's delicious, and I was thinking that the egg yolk could be used as an emulsifier
That's great! One day our dear John is going to release a video entitled "It Was All About The Nutmeg". "Welcome to 18th Century...look, it's never been about the 18th century, or cooking, or history! It's always been all about the nutmeg! I'VE SEEN THE FUTURE, AND IT'S NUTMEG! HAPPY NOW?! WAKE UP AND SMELL THE NUTMEG!"
In Portugal it's called "açorda", in my humble opinion the egg yolk should be the last thing to add to the crab and bread. While everything is hot, take off the heat and add the yolk. As always great content!
"About a half a nutmeg?" "Ahhhh I think that's more than en--" "About a little bit mo--" "Ahhhh stop it, thank you" Recipe might've been a failure but that interaction was worth it
A simpler use of only a subset of these ingredients can make something that would be better, at last to modern tastes. This is definitely not a survival food.
I imagine that the freshness of seafood was far below what we expect today. The abundance of rotten seafood quite possibly may have been why it was considered more a food for the poor rather than the rich, I wonder. For this reason perhaps it often needed more cooking and cloaking with other flavours. Disclaimer: not a historian.
My dad grew up in Newfoundland, and lobster being for the poor was true even 50, 60 years ago. He ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch every day of his adult life because when he went to school, peanut butter was the fancy food. In Newfoundland anyone could drop a lobsterpot in the water but buying peanut butter took money. He almost never ate lobster because of that association.
Yup. Same with my dad. He lived on Bayport Long Island during the depression and had to gather and sell and eat oysters. He hated them his entire life. His mom kept chickens so he had a lot of egg salad sandwiches for lunch. Hated the way they smelled but still preferred them to those oysters!
I can't even begin to fathom hating seafood lol , that too because some sort of classist prerogatives. I mean heck if something tastes that good , I don't care who eats it cause I'm gonna be the one tasting it 😋
My mom doesn't eat meat. She's not a vegetarian and loves fish. But when your uncle was a butcher, you just can't see that stuff anymore at some point.
Thats interesting. In my country during middle ages, salmon was in very similar position as lobster or seafood as described here, even including workers demanding not to be fed salmon more than 3 times a week. How times change
After finishing this video I wonder if these types of food situations were because of how the dish was prepared and not the food itself is the problem. Then again stuff like Salmon is really good even with just a bit of salt and pepper so this change in attitude towards certain foods very interesting lol
Salmon is delicious, but everything gets old if you eat it every day, so I get where they were coming from. It's the same reason the upper class gets a kick out of eating peasant food once in a while.
Salmon was a very common protein for commoners in feudal Europe, in part because it wasn't reserved by local lords, and so could be harvested freely without worrying about being executed for poaching. Most forms of game (rabbits excluded) were the lord's property by default.
I was laughing tears. Simply marvellous. No idea what' could be done about this recipe. Obviously the texture is just wrong, but also the taste. Hmmm......
In my village in northern Norway workers lost their minds if they got served salmon more than three times per week. My great grandfather had it in his contract but before that it was an issue that could result in violence. We live next to a salmon river, but still, wild salmon is expensive.
Ryan's reaction! Oh my, he wasn't as polite for the camera as John and Michael. I am so tempted to try this myself as I want to know what it tastes like now.
@@thisorthat7626 I feel the same. And half a nutmeg for such a small portion? My brother recently put too much nutmeg in our mashed potatoes. Yuck. And that was way less than half a for a family sized batch. Someone suggested putting in garlic instead and I could see that tasting much better.
@@raraavis7782 I love strong flavors but I have ruined dishes by putting too much of one flavor in the dish. I will try nutmeg in mashed potatoes though. Just a small amount to start. Thanks!!
In my experience, crabmeat don't taste that good when it's cooked without the shell. Also, I don't think the breadcrumbs were there for thickening, I think they were there for filler, like meatballs.
collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-2731642R-bk#page/74/mode/2up/search/To+stew+crabs No; it was there for thickening; as taken from the section of the book they were reading on STEWING.
My dad had a replica of an early 18th century fishermen's contract from Sweden (which I sadly have lost in my many moves) that literally stipulated that they could not be fed Salmon more than once a week.
Something I never thought of; all the beaches we sunbathe on now ... used to be covered with seafood; crabs, easy access lobsters, clams, limpets, periwinkle ... All the beaches. We've made them expensive food items.
@@christianh4723 These things aren’t really that scarce at all in my experience. You can get them all pretty easily if you know what you’re doing. Especially crabs and shellfish. I can easily get a few dozen clams at even the most crowded beaches with suitable conditions. I don’t think the high prices are a matter of scarcity, for the most part. There is high demand for seafood all across the world, and in places that don’t have access to the ocean. Combine that with the fact the mostly all seafood isn’t really farmable, and when it is, it’s considered undesirable.
He said "Stop it >:( Thank you 😊 " 😂 I love their episodes together. This channel re-awoke my childhood dream of being a historical interpreter and I'm actually pursuing that now!
I understand something may have been lost in translation but 'Peculiar' seems to have a negative connotation. I like the vagueness of of 'interesting' 😁
My nan is always telling me about her dad, my Great Grandfather, who was from Inishcrone, Ireland. Everytime he would come home from the beach he always brought seafood with him, and it was bountiful. She also reminisces about how great and fresh the seafood tasted, and laments how expensive it is now. I can't imagine living the same way, it seems so magical to me
Keep doing what you're doing. I'm a chef, professionally, and intake massive amounts of food and cooking-related UA-cam content. Rivaled only by the mount of history-based content I enjoy. This channel gave me meaningful perspective in my line of work and passion, with applicable knowledge for why dishes are what they are today and piecing together the evolution of cuisine. An informative, applied anthropological dive into what and how we ate. Truly one of my all time favorite creators. You guys do a really good job.
@fred McMurray Having a phone doesn't make life worth living. Just saying...it's not always about stuff we have don't have, sometimes it's the things happening to us.
@fred McMurray Point being: 2 things can be true at once. You can be thankful for what you have and still acknowledge that there are crappy things happening.
And asked that question right after having assembled and cooked the recipe. Hmm, short memory? Or perhaps he was thinking that those assembled items should not have tasted like that.
@@presidentlouis-napoleonbon8889 you're nitpicking ... really; he made the recipe then said "I don't know what's in this" ... what is wrong with this video? Can you see what is going on?
@@427Arbok I bet it was the wine. do what I do and drink the wine separately.....if you have enough of the wine beforehand, the stewed crab might taste okay.....maybe. The next day may be less pleasant though.
@@cyriljackal Hey, snails are really good... Haha, I catch them myself, feed them some veggies for a few days then boil them up, extract and mince the meat, mix it with some bacon bites and have a light snack, or I cook them the traditional way with garlic, like if it was a mussle
The beauty of being a midwesterner and going to see some historic preserved 18th century sites in Missouri growing up was that if we got to try some of those recipes, you appreciate the arts of Culinary, because some of the olden days' food was just PLAIN FREAKING BAD. Case in point, this recipe by John and his cameraman's reactions.
Baltimore here. Gotta say that my stomach turned just watching this. I’m thinking it should be more like a crab cake or crab soup? Old recipes like that are more ‘suggestions’ than anything, right?) Eggs, crabmeat, breadcrumbs, seasonings... Maybe the wine was for drinking!! Who knows...
or the wine could have been used to poach the crab cakes if no animal fat was available. I believe the bread crumbs should have been larger chunks of hand-torn stale bread to soak up the wine, egg and crab juice which would have become custard like if not stirred too much., NOT PULVERIZED OR POWDERED TOAST. Or was the stewed crab understood to be a base for something else like a chowder?
I was thinking crab cakes too....eggs/breadcrumbs...makes sense. Although it wouldn't be called "stew" then would it? What a sad thing to loose good crab meat.
Just think about the reality of only having to feed 1/1000th as many people... the oceans may have had a thousand times as many fish. It must have felt like a limitless supply to the people of the 18th century.
John is totally in the pocket of Big Nutmeg.
This man has sold more nutmeg worldwide than 18th century spire barons
LOL - so funny!
He IS Big Nutmeg
Definitely needs an intervention, maybe introduce some cloves, Hey a little cinnamon is what he needs!
I laughed, good one.
"This is not good. Here try this." Now that's a real friend.
Sharing is caring
Growing up, my older sister used to do that to me all the time.
Here, taste this it's awful! You gotta taste this!
After the first time, I'd just give her the stink eye and say no. I still have no clue why she still does it today and if I'm around... I say NO!!!
@@johnNJ4024 My husband tries this with me. Or with cleaning out the fridge “Here, smell this!” No thanks
And a true friend tries it. Not out of kindness but more out of knowing that it’ll probably be funny
I am reminded of Jeff Foxworthy's comedy skit about the courtesy sniff. Here, you have the courtesy taste. The third guy now has a courtesy taste token that he can cash in with Jon at any given time.
8:15 THE WAY THE MUSIC CUTS OUT 😭😭😭
*record scratch*
Laughed harder that i was supposed to :D
*18th century music stops*
that was perfect editing, bravo!
YEESS
I love how universal it is for guys when they taste/smell something gross to INSTANTLY need to share it and get their friends to also experience it. There is some sort of primal joy watching your friend also be disgusted.
Don’t wait til air’s the foulest to take your deepest breath in life…..😂
Lmao, that's so true, me and my friends share terrible food taste tests all the time
Yeah, but the same goes for when guys make something really good
Hang out with chef guys, you will get fed incredibly well
@@skilletborne
For free?
Dutch oven
“Maybe we got the recipe wrong, maybe their taste buds were different”
Or maybe you just discovered why people refused to eat it more than three times a week!
Those were prisoners and servants complaining about eating lobster 3 times a week.
or maybe they should have added the yolk last like the recipe said? Even just as, like, an experiment?
@@BluJean6692 I agree. You would have gotten scramble egg pieces. Totally different flavor. Plus, light and gentle stirring so the crab pieces do not break up so bad. They screwed this recipe up badly. They should have been lumps of crab and small pieces of egg.
I mean shrimp and lobsters are just wet bugs. Crabs? A militant wet bug!
@@vacuousbard6410 Crabs are just wet spiders
“Had a second spoonful - haven’t dropped dead yet.”
What an A+++ quote, haha.
And then they made Ryan try it.
Inedible? _MRESteve has entered the chat_
@@Anolaana a man of culture I see
@@calico9046 "Ooo, Nice hiss."
Sounds like what the moms were saying to their kids in the 1800s 😂
Now we know why everyone complained about the seafood back then: they cooked it badly.
There is nothing worse than badly cooked seafood. I rarely make it at home, because like white fish it is easy to mess up, and it isn’t a cheap thing to mess up.
From what I've read somewhere, what they gave the prisoners was even worse, just mashed paste of sorts, with the shells and everything.
@@jurissilins8644 yeah, back when lobster was considered trash food they boiled huge vats of them and just ground them up, shells and all, as food for prisoners. They did it bc lobsters were absolutely everywhere at the time; I just wish lobsters were as common now xD
@@Swarbie8D ooh that’s rough... crunchy lobster mush... with the guts and all. Yeh that’s punishment!
They didn't add enough nutmeg.
"Fish and seafood... a dish of the poor?" I think as I sit quietly watching this while eating canned tuna
Poor people now can't afford canned tuna.
With how easy is today to get your hands on all kinds of food you`ll think sea food will be mostly cheap with few excepciones and idk why people think shelves or crabs are food for the rich when they are easily mass produced.
Like for example my country has a big part of it like the whole east border is just beaches and sea right.
So finding shelves in buckets in just a day is quite normal yet if you go to a bistro at the beach they`ll charge you almost as much as for a beef stake or something like that and it just doesnt make sense.
So i never payed for a restaurant food that i know i can get for cheap easily cuz its all based on making the client believe the lie.
If im eating at a place i`ll pick the stuff i dont know cuz its new to me or its rare in my country
@@МихаилРадулов-й4т That's the point of restaurants!!! if you want common food cook it at home.
@@al-imranadore1182 no that is not the point of a restaurant its a benefit but absolutely not the point.
@@МихаилРадулов-й4т companies inflate the prices to line their pockets
I was beginning to wonder if John liked every recipe out of respect, or kindness. Nice to see its his honest opinion he's giving lol.
Nah he doesn’t like coffee anything and I think some pickled eggs (or something like it. He tasted it once and he was done lol)
I think they choose ones that sound good mostly and just like old movies the ones we still hear about are the good ones
@@adamgoldberg98 how bad are the recipes that didn't make it?
I believe there was a pickled fish recipe that Ryan ate rather a lot of, but that Jon found pretty repulsive. The next day when Jon found out that Ryan had survived the night and felt fine he was rather surprised.
@@TheBeanHome When did he say he didn't like coffee? I remember him doing a ideo on a dish where it was eggs mixed with coffee and he hated it, but as for coffee by itself I don't recall him ever saying he dislikes it.
"nutmeg?"
-"ok thats enough"
"n...nutmeg"
-"ok ok STOP"
"NUTMEG"
Pepper: "OK, that's a lot" lol
Power move
That hurt to watch “ok I’m stopping”
Jon's crippling nutmeg addiction begins to affect those around him
I couldn't believe this part it was insane why didn't they cut that and start over haha there was real hostility there
Who needs your food to be tasty when it’s been nothing but hardtack and salted meat for months?
Good point
It has protein, so it must be good :D
@@TheSlavChef They only cared about their rum ration haa!
Yep, eat it fast enough & you won't taste it.
@@paulvontarsus729 hahaah, anything is edible with enough RUM
8:15 The fact that the music stops when they taste it is EXTREMELY funny, and an underrated editing gem! Bravo!
was looking for a comment on this, that got me laughing too!
*Cooks the dish himself and tastes it... Winces*
"I'm not sure what's in here"
What a great endorsement of the dish! Haha
🤣
Let's be honest, John influenced that dish a bit too much! Spoiled with pepper and nutmeg
@@PimpMacSlickBac lets be honest they didnt seem to vibe good together
@@aG_oh_so_Sneaky yeah, definitely not the closest of cooks
"It doesn't...it doesn't look good" 😂
When the camera man says "It doesn't look good" you need to worry.
Camera guy is actually a good cook from what i've seen
@@reaper_exd7498 Yup! He's the master baker. And he does not like this recipe.
This might be the recipe that the servants were complaining about!
You also have to keep in mind that shellfish expires quickly if it isnt kept alive or frozen, and they probably wouldnt be getting nice fresh shellfish.
valid point.
I think it might be cooked like that too to try and keep it safer
| DINNER GUEST MENU | This guaranteed no Continental Breakfast!
@@arthas640 Until widespread refrigeration seafood was mostly a costal/extremely wealthy thing. There are a few good documentaries and essays explaining how trans-continental rail/canning/nascent refrigeration tech all came together to make lobster into a fancy food in the American (now global) psyche.
@@DAndyLord It's still just a big bottom-feeding sea bug that tastes like a sea bug. I don't get it. It's like people use Lobster as an excuse just eat a ton of butter the most expensive way possible. Fish is so much better and actually has variety. All sea bugs taste roughly the same.
Lmfaooo I loved the reaction at 8:40 it's like he's always so cheerful and he finally broke character because the dish was so poorly constructed in the recipe lmao. He knew he was about to eat some bullshit.
The music grinds to a halt too, I like that he didn't bother with the bit when the food tasted like crap lol like it doesn't deserve the character
@@rohunsaigal2576 I loved that the music stopped, made it much funnier lol
Lmaooo
That’s the reaction of people who have tried something horrible and want their friend to try and find their reaction absolutely hilarious, its also almost a universal reaction as well and absolutely hilarious at that
One suspects that this was supposed to be eaten alongside bread.
Jon: "...as we savor the flavors and aromas of the 18th century!"
Michael: {grimaces and shakes his head}
I was waiting for a line like this “...except this one”
needs nutmeg
I loved Michael's face there, really great comment
"More nutmeg?"
"John, that's a toxic dose...!"
"So.... more, then?"
Fun fact: It was used a narcotic in an open prison where the prisoners where allowed to order their own provisions. The prison staff couldn't work out why everyone was ordering so much nutmeg! It's allegedly hallucinogenic (I've never personally tried it) in high concentrations.
@@richbuilds_com it’s a really bad hallucinogen in my experience, gives you this terrible grinding headache inducing high when you’re awake and when you sleep it gives you crazy abstract dreams, in my experience anyway. Still the best spice out there though.
I gonna die doing what I love
@@richbuilds_com It's also easy to take a fatal dose. Stick to MJ
Toxic means that you will be tripping balls lol
My friend's parents were french acadians and when they went to school the poor kids had lobster rolls for lunch and the rich kids got baloney sandwiches on white bread.
How backwards it is now, lucky poor kids
Lobsters were considered cockroaches of the sea and often fed to prisoners as a very cheap meal, until they became a delicacy by WW2. The School thought they were being slick.
@@McBlaster666 I did only hear about the prisoners being fed lobster in the past. Wasn't aware it was a mass thing in the lower class
Still can't afford lobster and scallops
I love bologna. Stuff is great fried and goes well with an egg between some bread. I think the real lesson here is that the value of food is arbitrary and ever changing. What's garbage to one person is a delicacy to another.
8:10 caught me off-guard enough to get me chuckling, the usual happy post-recipe music starting and cutting off when John's disgust shows
"STOP IT THANK YOU" - Yet another guest undergoing nutmeg torture on Townsends Family Cookin' Kitchin'
Haha!!!! I came to find this comment 😆
@@sweetaudrina_ Well do it again!
Hilarious
“‘Bout a little bit more?” Lmaooooo Jon loves his nutmeg
The first thing I learned as a Navy cook was that nutmeg was like salt.
A little goes a LONG LONG way.
Who the hell puts nutmeg on seafood?!?!
What's it called when a crab is walking to it's part time job?
A side hustle.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I'm on a no seafood diet to lose weight
It's low crab.
I laughed way too hard at this XD
🤣🤣🤣
That's the most dad thing I've ever heard in my life.
"...anchovies and... NUTMEG"
Yup, there it is
Precisely, get rid of the nutmeg and I’m sure this dish would be more than palatable. I would also sub out the tinned anchovies for some “white fish” of some sort, although an oily fish may be a better fit for others tastes.
But I really do think the admission of nutmeg caused this dish to come in subpar.
@Dirty Cracker well....pineapple on pizza is another foul dish lol
@@brandonswitzer6957 Well in the nutmeg's defense, it's meant to be used sparingly bcuz its so pungent. Pretty sure a light dash would've been more than sufficient. This dude was piling it on with a grater like it was friggin' parmesan cheese! 🤦♂️
Yeah, he's leaning into the meme too much. He really needs to cut it out with the nutmeg.
@@deaconstjohn4842 Tread lightly
"maybe it needs another anchovy"
"the anchovy is the thing I don't like!"
My 2 brain cells
Jon: "Alright, let's try it!"
*happy fiddle music starts playing*
Jon and Michael: >_<
*record scratch*
Since it called for an egg, I wonder if that was for binding for the breadcrumbs. Maybe it was supposed to be more like a crab cake. (?)
that would make more sense, and possibly taste better
I wonder if they did that on purpose to see if we could decipher an 18th-century recipe? Sneaky dogs! Hahaha!
It's specifically called stew, and since food was not wasted, stale bread was a common sauce/gravy/soup thickener along with egg.
It could be a thickener; they put the egg with the wine and that was wrong;
The recipe should be wine in crab meat, egg in bread crumbs and use the egg/breadcrumbs to thicken the wine/crabmeat. It should be an American gravy like mix to pour over biscuits. It should be wonderful.
@Conrad Comics The wine and the anchovy would be a fishstock replacement, I think
LMAO he just throws a plate of crab on the table.
LMAOOOOO the music scratch after the first bite. I love this channel you guys are AWESOME!
Because they ruined it.
pure gold!
I agree. The unceremonious resignation of that plate throw and the little bits that went flying tells me everything I have to look forward to.
I laughed throughout this video. 🤣
They had probably already tasted it and formed their opinion when that clip was filmed. The disgust is obvious. Lol
Prisoners in the 18th century: "Stop feeding us lobster more than three times a week!"
Prison guards: "Don't be so shellfish!"
18th century poor Americans: “I sure am tired of eating lobster bisque and crab legs, we gotta find some real food!” 🤣
I cannot even imagine! Those are two of my all time favorite things!
Someone, get me a time travel machine!
I remember that I was once told certain fish here in Germany was poor men's food. Not only on the coast, but also along the rivers. Especially salmon and eel, things everyone could get by catching it himself as any game was considered property of the regional lords, early, counts etc. Or not available in the towns and cities back then.
Hard to imagine that salmon was poor men's food on the one hand or that you could catch anything edible from the Rhine. A few years ago if you would catch anything you would have been worries about glowing in the dark after eating it.
amazing how so many foods from over a hundred years ago that were originally " poor people foods" are now considered foods for wealthier people.
lobster, crab, clams, salmon, and even cavier were all foods that people hated for how cheap and common they were , but now people can't get enough of it.
@@grzegorzbrzeczyszykiewic3338 At the same time. There were former "upper class" foods that have become cheap foods in modern times.
Pineapples, bananas, chicken, white bread, and pasta.
I always love when something tastes awful, cause it's always, "Hey, come try this." And then the laughter and reactions are always gold.
Same thing when you catch whiff of something awful. Your first reaction is to get your friends to smell it as well.
@@LukeL007 Hey, as a 'bro' you are obligated to one 'courtesy sniff' when it comes to something awful that might be presented to you by a fellow bro. 😁
@@jester9159true dat
Something about a crab dish being mediocre just hits me hard.
It's not natural. All you need is butter and salt... how can you ruin it?
@asdrubale bisanzio You're almost right... sometimes you need to remove the non-butter contaminants....
@@trygveskogsholm5963 Cooked crab by itself + butter is amazing. But it can also be eaten with things other than butter. Chinese king crab with ginger and scallions is tasty. I don't know what's going on with the nutmeg and anchovies in this dish though.
@@trygveskogsholm5963 Its easy to ruin it!!! Just cook it to long... Do Not over cook seafood..
I love your avatar picture.
Love how the music stops after a few seconds of eating
The fact that Mike keeps tasting it and trying to think of how he can make it taste good really shows how great of a chef he is. I really appreciate that guy and what he has to say.
A food that cannot be saved by Nutmeg?
OH NO
An unreal thought-nutmeg is the thing that likely killed it!
Being from Baltimore, and knowing my way around a crab, this was a primitive recipe for crab cakes. They have all the right ingredients, but they should have used WAY less liquid and WAY more breadcrumbs to form a cake for frying in the pan over the fire. I'm sure they used pasteurized crab as well which doesn't have a great flavor. Back to the drawing board and think cod cake instead of stew. It'll come out way better!
How bout dem O's hon?
This was my take on it as they were adding the egg, I thought, "wait, you have a crab cake recipe you're making mush out of?"
As a cook of 10 years at 29. I have a decent amount of experience and I definitely thought crab cakes too. Definitely less white wine and a lot more breadcrumb, otherwise it’s just a hot crab salad type of situation
It also reminded me of fish gratin, needs less liquid as you said.
I was wondering if it was going to be somewhat like a condensed Maryland cream of crab soup. Nope. Nope. Not even similar.
I often come back to watch this video solely because the opening never fails to have me in absolute stitches. That undignified *THWAP* as you see the crab stew go airborne and Jon trying to stay in character throughout it just never gets any less hilarious to me 🤣
You and me both, partner. It gets me every time.
A lot of stewed crab overspray in that shot too lol. Luckily I’m sure the room already smelled bad from just cooking it.
Tossed on to the table with utter disgust and contempt by Michael - it is both funny and a foreshadowing of the horrors to come. 😆😆😆
The way John tries to hype himself up by stating he’s liked almost every single recipe is one of the funniest body language betrayals. It was like he knew it would taste foul.
Yeah. He was just looking at it, saying "I don't know..."
Yeah. It seems as if they possibly tried it beforehand. Conspiracy abounds🤔
In one of their Livestreams I'm pretty sure he said he kinda knew from the recipe it wasn't going to be very good.
Possibly from the smell.
Top 10 anime betrayals of settler times.
Not every historical recipe is going to go over well. Sometimes, there is a good reason it fell out of favor.
More like...out of FLAVOR! (I'll see myself out...)
A variant of this is high cusine, so it's probably the anchovy. English taste for fish is sometimes weird.
@@LuisAldamiz yeah, they lost me there too. Thanks, but no thanks. I think maybe some of these kinds of things were maybe acquired tastes and people just trying to make due with what they had access to. Maybe it would be better without the anchovies?
@@LuisAldamiz tho only edible thing with anchovies coming to my mind is fermenting them into worcestershire sauce
@@alexanderkupke920 - I was taught that "anchovies are the ham of the sea", what means like the greatest thing outside of land, because in land that's Iberian ham. Also the taste somewhat similar. But, unlike ham, I would not use them for anything.
Also nutmeg is for sweets, omelettes and backpain, never heard of nutmeg with seafood.
The cook doesn't have to feel bad at all... this wasn't his fault. He did his best and followed the recipe.
That music cutting off was the funniest thing on this channel so far. 🤣
Crazy theory: maybe the alcohol of the wine hadn't been completely burnt off? I imagine that the egg yolk would solidify pretty quickly, perhaps thus "trapping" the wine, causing the "yuck!" effect? Maybe it'd be better to first add crab and bread into the frying pan, then add the wine, burn off the alcohol, and then stir in the egg yolk? Just my tuppenceworth. 😎
@@danielvanr.8681 I'd say possibly even cutting the "beloved" nutmeg all together, replacing wine with some cream or milk and some salt maybe with the crab cooked more first?
Making it more like kedgery that way a very nice dish by the 19th century (thank you for that recipe btw Mrs. Crocumb!)
@@Rach1313 Honestly I'm a fan of just boiling in salt water then adding salt, pepper and some citrus etc and I'm happy.
Hell, it doesn't even need citrus or pepper lol :)
I'm not a fan of crab at the best of times but steeping it in a slow-ish boil with an anchovy is probably the worst way i can think of to prepare one.
This is what Robert Pattinson ate when he went crazy in The Lighthouse
But ye like me lobstar
HARK!!!
Keepin' secrets, are ye?
Needs more kerosene
@SonofEyeaboveall Effoff More tall tales
Me in the 18th Century: _"Crab, Lobster? SURE! Just boil it and give me some salt, butter, and garlic! I'll be happy!"_
Every noble within a mile: _"I sense a disturbance in my purse..."_
Ikr
The problem could be that the legs were stewed. Crab only needs to be cooked very briefly, and should never be cooked twice, or it'll be ruined. If you overcook crab, it gets a strong, fishy, nasty flavor and smell. It sounds like whoever made this recipe just had no idea how to cook crab, and didn't know how to cook it to be palatable.
Lack of refrigeration and the quick decomposition of shellfish means that overcooking was the only safe way to go.
@@MrAsaqe How so? You can do all this today with no refrigeration and not overcook the shellfish. Why is refrigeration needed? For this recipe, you kill the animal, remove the meat, and cook.
@@draconity Crab, shrimp and Lobster have bacteria in their flesh that causes quick decomposition and a rancid smell upon dying if cooking quickly.
@@MrAsaqe Okay, but how can we cook them today just fine with no refrigeration involved?
@@draconity there is refrigeration involved today.
One of my favorite stories about lobster comes from a tour guide in Boston. She told a story about how her dad was a lobster fisherman, and they were treated as poor because they often had to eat lobster. How the times have changed...
Yep, though of course that was also coming from a time when all seafood, especially shellfish, was still so plentiful and hadn't been _overfished_ yet!
I love the cook in this "I had a second spoonfull, haven't dropped dead yet" 😭
He was in another episode, he made Scottish eggs I think
@@nicemomasmr He's been in a bunch. Michael Dragoo brings up some pretty obscure recipes and loves using double Brazers when he cooks.
That’s a ringing endorsement by the standards of colonial English cuisine
That's a ringing endorsement! Put it on the box! LOL!
“And a little nutmeg”
*oh no*
@rockman fan
It’s a running joke that he’s addicted to nutmeg, so whenever it’s mentioned we make jokes about it.
When my mom was a little girl in the early 50s they had a lot of lobster for Lent -- because they were poor and it was cheap. It was considered "trash" even that recently!
Now a lobster roll is about $16... And I'm 22 :(
Sea bugs
It's still pretty cheap in places where it's harvested. You can buy good, fresh lobsters for 2-3 dollars a pound if you live near the coast of new england. And they'll be better than any you'll find in the supermarket.
@@Scrimjer delicious sea bugs
It still is...trash.
The funny thing about Michael (the cook) was that he continued eating the crab dish while also complaining about it being bad. 😅😅
Well not gonna waste it lol
It may be terrible, but the portions are so generous!
Yeah Im cracking up over that.
The crab and lobster at the time was in clean waters. No plastics. No freak oil spills. No pollution. Wooo. If you could go back in time and freak out the locals by eating the headfat and guts. Wooo...so good. Screw the peasants. They were living like kings.
"Thanks for joining us as we -savour- _endure_ the flavours and the aromas of 18th century cooking."
LMAOO
"place over a gentle charcoal heat"
*Puts it over an open flame.*
"add a little black pepper"
::Adds in 3 grams::
--"add a little nutmeg."
Adds half a nutmeg.
In this case means low temp, not necessarily not open.
@@CallanElliott An open wood flame is VERY HOT. Most fire cooking is done either on a thermal mass like a rock, or clay oven, or on low coals.
A google search and bare bones research tells me that for there to even be a flame from wood, the material must be at least 500 degrees.
What do you think eggs do at 500 degrees? They don't cook, they curdle. The meat probably dissolved into a sludge of strange compounds.
I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a nice pudding consistency with chunks of nicely cooked shellfish.
Instead it became curdled egg and crustacean goop.
@@ramblinevilmushroom Did your research tell you how much of that heat is lost to the surrounding air, how much is transfered into the pan, how much heat is then lost by the pan, and finally how much of that heat actually gets into the food.
I had a dear friend from Maine who said her grandmother used to hide the lobster stew in the fridge when people came over. The recipe she showed me would go for, like, $39 in a restaurant today!
$39 is such an oddly specific number... strange.
My grandfather (I'm also from Maine) wouldn't touch lobster for the same associations. "Our family didn't climb up from the ditch of poverty to eat garbage feeding ocean bugs" is a pretty close quote.
fake news until u share the recipe
@@michaelcohen9363i was just about to comment the same thing haha
$39 dollars 😂 if you said $50 or $100 I may of believe you
Interesting, I watch some historical channels about kitchen, mostly in medieval times and in XVIII century, and what I noticed is that most of the food that was really cheap then, now became really expensive. I love to watch such shows, thank you for making one!
Rye, even whole wheat bread was considered peasant food in the medieval period
My heart aches saying this, but i think the nutmeg is killing the flavour in this recipe. It just does not go well with seafood. Especially when mixed with anchovi wich is a natural flavour amplifier.
Try the same recipe with a bit of garlic instead of nutmeg and i'm sure it will taste great. Garlic does a great job at enhancing seafood flavour!
i think you’ve hit the crab on the carapace. :) 🦀
Nutmeg is a must-have for pickled herring with onions.
And butter instead of white wine
what about the huge pinches of pepper? :-p
Maybe a bit more breadcrumbs to soak up the excess liquid so it had more of a form and shape than a blob!
With egg, breadcrumbs,and anchovy, this seems like a precursor to a crab cake
Yeah, I think the biggest mistake was adding so small of an amount of breadcrumbs.
@@anotherkenlon I was gonna say too much water, certainly seems like a crab cake
Just had one of the biggest laughs I have had in weeks. Even a "fail" is a success on this channel. Love you guys and Michael is always a treat to see.
6:30 you can really see the friction going on between these two 🤣
A half a nutmeg? No? Oh-okay
Having worked in supermarkets I have witnessed as much as half of the seafood seen displayed in the cases thrown out. That's why seafood is so expensive, and it's why our fisheries are being depleted. Almost all seafood has to come in frozen because quantities of fresh can't be kept for more than a couple of days. Oily fishes like Salmon (and trout-basically the same family) are not fish that freeze well and are shipped from a farm (or wild-caught, often flown in.) I think Salmon's popularity drives its sale in restaurants and in grocery but still so much is thrown away. The point is because there is such waste there is much markup. This causes seafood to be priced out of the diets of many families, which in turn leads to more waste and more mark up and depleted stock and then more thrown away etc., etc. The price of seafood also puts it out of reach of younger cooks who experiment with different foods. Many can afford to take a loss on a recipe that uses boneless, skinless, chicken breast at $4.99 per pound over a recipe that calls for Turbot at $12.99 per pound.
In chain grocers, the price of seafood can even be exorbitant in coastal areas, especially tourist areas because many local fishermen have given way to larger corporate fleets (or sell exclusively to corporations) and aquaculture who seek higher markup for the sake of investor profits. Locals do however know where they can still get fresh fish for a reasonable cost. One thing I loved about living in Northern Virginia, along the Potomac, near the coast was the ability to pull up to a roadside convenience store and buy blue crab by the bushel almost as cheaply as I can buy peaches at the roadside stands in the Carolinas in season!
Why wouldn’t they make them less expensive to get them off the shelves?
Yeah, there are very few fresh fish/meat counters left in the main supermarkets here in the UK and where they do have them, it's an incredibly overwhelming smell of fish that tells me it's way past its best! Not very appealing at all and it's why I tend to have to go frozen or tinned as an (almost) always fresher tasting option! As crazy as that sounds heh.
I agree on the prices as well, for sure it is way of reach for most and eventually I probably won't be able to be as selective!
@@jolonghthong Don't question him. He's worked in supermarkets.
And this is why I catch my own, if the salmon I catch isn't eaten in a few days, we smoke it because we k ow we will never eat it if it gets frozen
Peasant: I had lobster for dinner!
Aristocrat: Oh you poor thing!
Aristocrat comes back to life this age: oh god i'm poor , can i have a lobster
vendor: sure thal be 100 dollar
Aristocrat: wait what?
Time traveler from 2021: What the...Oh I'm about to be a very rich man.
Lobstah
honestly cooked like they used to, seafood is a nightmare, have you ever had overcooked lobster?
@@louisazraels7072 Yes, the very first time I tried it, I was in Mexico. They had grilled it and it was all rubbery! I thought that was normal for years until I got to try some really good tender lobster, so good!
"Maybe we did the recipe wrong, or maybe their taste buds were different from ours."
Or maybe the reason they all hated crab and lobster so much was that they sucked at cooking it lol
that's my theory. i think this dish is probably just disgusting and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Ditch the nutmeg and anchovy, replace it with sea salt, thyme, and a dash of lemon juice. Cook quickly on a hot fire instead of slowly stewing it.
@@foosmonkey In other words, scrap the entire recipe and make something more modern where we actually enjoy eating this animal.
You’re fond of me lobster ain’t ye?
@@kdaltex nice
My poor Maryland heart is crying out for Old Bay...
"Interesting"
aka the Northerner version of "Bless your heart."
Lol so very true...
From Michigan. Can confirm.
From Ohio, can also confirm.
Sometimes it really does mean its interesting. But when its bread, wine, and eggs with crab, yeah thats not interesting at all lol
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
"I don't know if our cat would eat that." 😂
I adore shellfish, but my cats don't care for it. If I give them a bit of shrimp or crab to taste, they sniff it and look at me like "Okay, Mom, not funny. How about some canned tuna?"
Jon: "About a half a Nutmeg? A little bit more?" The tone of his voice says "Let's go all in- we need MORE....No? Ok."
I'm guessing the anchovies that were mentioned were the salted and dried kind. If that's the case then that would be the one that will bring the necessary salty/savory flavor to the dish.
Reenactor from the Eastern Seaboard here (I live 15 minutes from Colonial Williamsburg) and I love your show! This recipe, in my opinion, failed because of several things:
The type of crab has to be very specific for it to work. Atlantic blue-crab (I'm partial to Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab) is a very different taste to Snow Crab, Alaskan King Crab, etc. Also, fresh crab is vital to getting the flavor right. Crab meat that you can buy in the grocery store is sometimes "padded out" with pollock and other white fish to bulk it up, so that may also be an issue.
The white wine would have different flavor, depending on whether sweet or dry, and that would make a huge difference for taste.
More breadcrumbs!
The egg yolk should not have been added with the wine, in my opinion, it should have been added after taking it off the fire, kind of like you make a bechamel sauce slowly and without scrambling to thicken. From experience, crab benefits from a thick sauce (or mayonnaise.)
My husband and I love your show, please take these as constructive criticism from huge fans of historical cooking!
Would that make it actually palatable?
Colonial Williamsburg is a great place to experience American History. I went there on a field trip in school and I still remember it vividly.
I suspect the wine. Any of those crabs are delicious in any preparation and all go with pepper and nutmeg. The only other ingredients are an egg yolk which to be fair could have been bad or an inappropriate wine for both shellfish and cooking.
I was thinking the same thing. When you cook mussels in a white wine sauce it's delicious, and I was thinking that the egg yolk could be used as an emulsifier
Everyone is so self important -
When the historical cooking music abruptly stopped I cracked up lmao
My 5 year old son has seen enough of Townsends' videos that he said, "Maybe it needs more nutmeg". XD
Awwwwww hahahah hope y’all are doing fine during these trying timws
Lets be honest; No he didn't
That's great!
One day our dear John is going to release a video entitled "It Was All About The Nutmeg".
"Welcome to 18th Century...look, it's never been about the 18th century, or cooking, or history! It's always been all about the nutmeg! I'VE SEEN THE FUTURE, AND IT'S NUTMEG! HAPPY NOW?! WAKE UP AND SMELL THE NUTMEG!"
In Portugal it's called "açorda", in my humble opinion the egg yolk should be the last thing to add to the crab and bread. While everything is hot, take off the heat and add the yolk. As always great content!
"About a half a nutmeg?"
"Ahhhh I think that's more than en--"
"About a little bit mo--"
"Ahhhh stop it, thank you"
Recipe might've been a failure but that interaction was worth it
The music stopping after the bite...*chefs kiss* This seems like a food that was just truly there to keep you alive.
Crazy to think that someone liked it enough to document it that exact way!
A simpler use of only a subset of these ingredients can make something that would be better, at last to modern tastes. This is definitely not a survival food.
That /clonk/ of the plate hitting the table and the crab goop flying out is just an A+ start to this video. Masterful work
This is one of my favorite episodes due to how real it feels.
Stewed Crab, or: How to Ruin Good Shellfish.
I thought that, too. They had no crap for the crab D:
I wonder if this is why food of the poor sucked. Not because a lack of food, but lak of understanding how to handle it
@@reaper_exd7498 The only thing worse was mooseballs. Even the moose wouldn't eat them. But he would lick them for quite awhile.
I imagine that the freshness of seafood was far below what we expect today. The abundance of rotten seafood quite possibly may have been why it was considered more a food for the poor rather than the rich, I wonder. For this reason perhaps it often needed more cooking and cloaking with other flavours. Disclaimer: not a historian.
My dad grew up in Newfoundland, and lobster being for the poor was true even 50, 60 years ago. He ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch every day of his adult life because when he went to school, peanut butter was the fancy food. In Newfoundland anyone could drop a lobsterpot in the water but buying peanut butter took money. He almost never ate lobster because of that association.
Yup. Same with my dad. He lived on Bayport Long Island during the depression and had to gather and sell and eat oysters. He hated them his entire life. His mom kept chickens so he had a lot of egg salad sandwiches for lunch. Hated the way they smelled but still preferred them to those oysters!
I can't even begin to fathom hating seafood lol , that too because some sort of classist prerogatives.
I mean heck if something tastes that good , I don't care who eats it cause I'm gonna be the one tasting it 😋
My mom doesn't eat meat. She's not a vegetarian and loves fish. But when your uncle was a butcher, you just can't see that stuff anymore at some point.
i cant believe it. lobster used to be cheap! oh i would kill for some lobster without paying an arm and a kidney!
That’s sad
Data from Star Trek Generations. “I hate this! Ugghh!”
“Would you like another?”
“Yes, please!”
"IT IS REVOLTING :)"
I love that scene haha!
This is a warriors drink. What is it.... Response- prune juice
@@thomasblaine3193 Prune juice teaches you self control on the "Alimentary" level. ;)
@@cranberry6pointOh good diction.
I still come back to this - and when the music stops, it gets me every time! 🤣
Thats interesting. In my country during middle ages, salmon was in very similar position as lobster or seafood as described here, even including workers demanding not to be fed salmon more than 3 times a week. How times change
Salmon was probably especially easy to get in spawning season.
@@VideoMask93 precisely
After finishing this video I wonder if these types of food situations were because of how the dish was prepared and not the food itself is the problem. Then again stuff like Salmon is really good even with just a bit of salt and pepper so this change in attitude towards certain foods very interesting lol
Salmon is delicious, but everything gets old if you eat it every day, so I get where they were coming from. It's the same reason the upper class gets a kick out of eating peasant food once in a while.
Salmon was a very common protein for commoners in feudal Europe, in part because it wasn't reserved by local lords, and so could be harvested freely without worrying about being executed for poaching. Most forms of game (rabbits excluded) were the lord's property by default.
I was laughing tears. Simply marvellous.
No idea what' could be done about this recipe. Obviously the texture is just wrong, but also the taste. Hmmm......
Funny thing is, if you remove the wine, add more spices, a whole egg, and more breadcrumbs, you have crab cakes.
Or you can pour butter on the crab and eat it. Who on Earth needs a recipe for crab.
In my village in northern Norway workers lost their minds if they got served salmon more than three times per week. My great grandfather had it in his contract but before that it was an issue that could result in violence. We live next to a salmon river, but still, wild salmon is expensive.
I guess I wired wierd. I can eat the same stuff for months on end. Salmon with rice? Sure all day everyday.
Salmon every day especially something like lox? I'm losing my mind for not having it! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease
Ryan's reaction! Oh my, he wasn't as polite for the camera as John and Michael. I am so tempted to try this myself as I want to know what it tastes like now.
You should try it and give us an update! I don't see how those ingredients could be bad together.
I think most of the ingredients would work together. But anchovies and nutmeg? I am not sure about that combination.
@@thisorthat7626
I feel the same. And half a nutmeg for such a small portion? My brother recently put too much nutmeg in our mashed potatoes. Yuck. And that was way less than half a for a family sized batch.
Someone suggested putting in garlic instead and I could see that tasting much better.
@@raraavis7782 I love strong flavors but I have ruined dishes by putting too much of one flavor in the dish. I will try nutmeg in mashed potatoes though. Just a small amount to start. Thanks!!
In my experience, crabmeat don't taste that good when it's cooked without the shell. Also, I don't think the breadcrumbs were there for thickening, I think they were there for filler, like meatballs.
collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-2731642R-bk#page/74/mode/2up/search/To+stew+crabs
No; it was there for thickening; as taken from the section of the book they were reading on STEWING.
My dad had a replica of an early 18th century fishermen's contract from Sweden (which I sadly have lost in my many moves) that literally stipulated that they could not be fed Salmon more than once a week.
Something I never thought of; all the beaches we sunbathe on now ... used to be covered with seafood; crabs, easy access lobsters, clams, limpets, periwinkle ... All the beaches. We've made them expensive food items.
Yep. I get an empty feeling thinking about what might be a "delicacy" by way of scarcity in 3021...
@@christianh4723 3021? 2021 and we are experiencing mass extinctions, no need to look so further in the future, it is happening now
@@christianh4723 These things aren’t really that scarce at all in my experience. You can get them all pretty easily if you know what you’re doing. Especially crabs and shellfish. I can easily get a few dozen clams at even the most crowded beaches with suitable conditions. I don’t think the high prices are a matter of scarcity, for the most part. There is high demand for seafood all across the world, and in places that don’t have access to the ocean. Combine that with the fact the mostly all seafood isn’t really farmable, and when it is, it’s considered undesirable.
He said "Stop it >:( Thank you 😊 " 😂 I love their episodes together. This channel re-awoke my childhood dream of being a historical interpreter and I'm actually pursuing that now!
Awesome!
So awesome!
I'm always suspicious whenever someone describes a dish as "interesting."
It's a technique I perfected as a child. Except I was a Czech child so I said "zvláštní" which is more like "peculiar". :D
I understand something may have been lost in translation but 'Peculiar' seems to have a negative connotation. I like the vagueness of of 'interesting' 😁
@@NyanyiC It does. I _was_ a child. ;-)
Especially when it's said slow-like
The dish is being SUS again
As a chef from the New Orleans area and we love our crabs down here. Now that the weather is beginning to warm up we'll have soft shells!
My nan is always telling me about her dad, my Great Grandfather, who was from Inishcrone, Ireland. Everytime he would come home from the beach he always brought seafood with him, and it was bountiful. She also reminisces about how great and fresh the seafood tasted, and laments how expensive it is now. I can't imagine living the same way, it seems so magical to me
I love the whole "It's terrible! Here, try it!" LOL!
Keep doing what you're doing. I'm a chef, professionally, and intake massive amounts of food and cooking-related UA-cam content. Rivaled only by the mount of history-based content I enjoy. This channel gave me meaningful perspective in my line of work and passion, with applicable knowledge for why dishes are what they are today and piecing together the evolution of cuisine. An informative, applied anthropological dive into what and how we ate. Truly one of my all time favorite creators. You guys do a really good job.
Back then it was lobster, now it's Mc Donalds.
6:33 A moment when I thought I would see two men kill each other over half a shaving of nutmeg
My life sucks so bad but this actually brought a belly laugh out of me. Thanks for making me laugh through the pain.
That's 2 of us
Just think you could be eating this for dinner...
ExarKenneth71: *life suddenly seems so much better*
God bless you sir ❤
@fred McMurray Having a phone doesn't make life worth living. Just saying...it's not always about stuff we have don't have, sometimes it's the things happening to us.
@fred McMurray Point being: 2 things can be true at once. You can be thankful for what you have and still acknowledge that there are crappy things happening.
John: * makes dish *
Also John: “I don’t know what’s in this...”
His name is actually Jon not John.
And asked that question right after having assembled and cooked the recipe. Hmm, short memory? Or perhaps he was thinking that those assembled items should not have tasted like that.
@@presidentlouis-napoleonbon8889 you're nitpicking ... really; he made the recipe then said "I don't know what's in this" ... what is wrong with this video? Can you see what is going on?
I believe the completed thought would be "I don't know what's in this that makes it taste like that," but he stopped mid-way through saying it
@@427Arbok I bet it was the wine. do what I do and drink the wine separately.....if you have enough of the wine beforehand, the stewed crab might taste okay.....maybe. The next day may be less pleasant though.
I still want to know who was the first person to come across a crab, look down at that insect/alien looking creature, and think "Yum!"
I believe if it moved it was cooked and eaten.
The answer to that, frog legs, snails and more is "I'm starving"
@@cyriljackal Hey, snails are really good... Haha, I catch them myself, feed them some veggies for a few days then boil them up, extract and mince the meat, mix it with some bacon bites and have a light snack, or I cook them the traditional way with garlic, like if it was a mussle
@@Whydoyoureadme why ruin bacon that way?
The first person to eat an oyster must’ve been a booger eater
The beauty of being a midwesterner and going to see some historic preserved 18th century sites in Missouri growing up was that if we got to try some of those recipes, you appreciate the arts of Culinary, because some of the olden days' food was just
PLAIN FREAKING BAD. Case in point, this recipe by John and his cameraman's reactions.
Baltimore here. Gotta say that my stomach turned just watching this.
I’m thinking it should be more like a crab cake or crab soup? Old recipes like that are more ‘suggestions’ than anything, right?) Eggs, crabmeat, breadcrumbs, seasonings...
Maybe the wine was for drinking!!
Who knows...
or the wine could have been used to poach the crab cakes if no animal fat was available. I believe the bread crumbs should have been larger chunks of hand-torn stale bread to soak up the wine, egg and crab juice which would have become custard like if not stirred too much., NOT PULVERIZED OR POWDERED TOAST. Or was the stewed crab understood to be a base for something else like a chowder?
I was thinking crab cakes too....eggs/breadcrumbs...makes sense. Although it wouldn't be called "stew" then would it? What a sad thing to loose good crab meat.
@@jenbergeron7955 They could have saved it by turning it into a chowder, gumbo or tureen/loaf.
The abundance of the rivers and oceans back then must have really been amazing, seemingly endless.
Just think about the reality of only having to feed 1/1000th as many people... the oceans may have had a thousand times as many fish. It must have felt like a limitless supply to the people of the 18th century.
After wathicing the recipe fail
*I'm on a no seafood diet to lose weight*
*It's low crab.*
~~ LOL ~~
🤣🤣
John seems so genuinely happy… It makes me miss simpler times.
Love when Michael Dragoo stops by! Guy is a natural.