At first I was like "Why would they use blood to preserve bread if it didn't have much shelf life" and then I realized the bread was to preserve the blood. Pretty metal.
I absolutely love the ongoing "Hard tack" *clack clack* joke. Everytime I hear the topic of hard track coming up, I look forward to that *clack clack* and then laughter ensues!
My wife mentioned hard tack in a conversation the other day, I said "clack clack" and snickered to myself. The whole family looked at me like I was insane, so I took over the TV to load up the video on youtube.
just like proper hard tack - it can work well for years. If you are hungry just look on this and decide 'naah, I can go with some diet for a bit longer, maybe I will find something edible'. Thanks to this particular recipe I understood fully dwarven bread from Discworld ;)
As a professional baker who is also of Danish descent, I got an AMAZING opportunity a few years ago. A touring Viking exhibit came through my town and landed at my local museum for a season. They had loaves of bread in this exhibit. Local bakeries were given the basic components of the bread that had been identified. Since this exhibit was close to my heart and my heritage, my bakery gave me the challenge to recreate the bread. We featured it while the exhibit was in town. It was so much fun and a great challenge. And it felt so awesome to reconnect with my ancestors.
ordet viking består av personer från området Viken, som syftar på området främst omkring Oslofjorden i Norge samt Bohuslän i Sverige. Området motsvarar i stort dagens norska fylken Vestfold, Akershus och Østfold. I Sverige omfattar området dagens Bohuslän till Göta älv i sydöst, inklusive hela Hisingen. ni är daner inte viking. mina färfäder var vikingr eller viking era var daner
HIGHLY recommend everyone go read the story of Loki's flyting at Aegir's feast. Loki just delivers one absolutely devastating revelation after another, made worse by the fact that what he says about each person is all true. The god Njörðr at one point basically says "I don't need to hear all this from some degenerate pervert who used his powers to get pregnant and bear children." And Loki responds "I'M a degenerate pervert? What about the time you got captured in war and all of the enemy's women pissed in your mouth? AND you had a kid with your own sister." It's amazing. If you're ever in a situation where someone can remind people that multiple people pissed in your mouth you need to shut up and leave.
Here is the passage: "33. "Small ill does it work | though a woman may have A lord or a lover or both;But a wonder it is | that this womanish god Comes hither, though babes he has borne." 34. "Be silent, Njorth; | thou wast eastward sent,To the gods as a hostage given;And the daughters of Hymir | their privy had When use did they make of thy mouth." 35. "Great was my gain, | though long was I gone, To the gods as a hostage given; The son did I have | whom no man hates, And foremost of gods is found." 36. "Give heed now, Njorth, | nor boast too high, No longer I hold it hid; With thy sister hadst thou | so fair a son, Thus hadst thou no worse a hope.""
Swede here. This stuff is still being eaten , or at least it was when I was a kid in the 1970s. My aunt made "paltbröd" every midsummer ("palt" being an archaic word for "blood", and "bröd" meaning "bread"). I haven't eaten it for decades and I was never that fond of it as a kid, but it's not a dead custom, it's still part of Scandinavian cousine.
“Paltbröd med fläsk” is a classic. You can still buy plat bread in well sorted shops today. For the dish you use dried palt bread that you soak in salted water for an hour and then cook, some do it in water but my old mum used milk. Then you serve it with bechamel sauce and fried salted pork rind. My mum had caramelized onion in the bechamel, making it into a onion sauce thus making it even tastier. My mum has passed away years ago and it was a very long time since I ate “paltbröd med fläsk” as I haven’t seen it been served at any restaurant in ages. I might try to make it myself, but I don’t think the rest of my family remembers it with the same fond memories!😂
as a long time viewer, I am never disappointed by your sense of humor. "You can do these things, when you're Beowulf, but YOU should not do these things."
You've been doing Tasting History for, like, a year and a half now, haven't you? Where has the time gone?? SO happy for your success! A wonderful niche to find!
It's really ingenious, isn't it? A lot of people find history presentations to be tedious and boring, so it makes sense that appealing to their collective sense of humor and universal love of food would enjoy such success. Not to downplay the enormity of the production process, of course.
And I love the collaborations you've been involved in! Especially Townsends, but also Ancient Recipes with Sohla and Chef Tony among others! This channel resulted from COVID interrupting your life plans, and instead turned into a completely new way to reach out and integrate people through a shared interest in cooking and history!
one thing i would add to this, Rye is the more common flour source in the areas this recipe comes from so Rye flour would probably make a more traditional loaf.
@L_B42 __ it kind of is. Because out of context bread would be referred to as "money" which means you killed someone for the money or something around those lines. I could be wrong though.
max I wanted to personally thank you I left my toxic job and these past 2 days I have been without stress and able to start healing. When you left Disney to do tasting history full time I know it wasn't the same but you had the courage to change and you motivated me into the same thing. Thank you from the bottom of my heart
The metallic smell of blood actually comes from the iron interacting with the oil from your skin. Trying smelling a completely clean penny, it won’t have a smell. Then try rubbing your fingers on it.
I think I used to eat a "crispbread" version of this bread at school lunches in northern Sweden, and I agree that you barely notice the blood flavour at all. I remember even being confused and disgusted when a teacher pointed out to us that the dark colour comes from the large amount of blood in it. Got over it pretty quickly though since it's so delicious!
In Finland we have blood pancakes, verilettu, quite a common dish in my school years and early work life. Not sure if people still eat much of that but yeah, it's good :)
@@MikkoMurmeli Haha, yes, I remembered those during the video and wondered if there was a common tradition behind it. I know them from a friend who bought them at a supermarket and, not being able to read finnish, mistook them for chocolate bisquits. We noticed quickly. But ever since I learned about lightly frying them and eating them warm, I absolutely love those. Also in or around Oulu, wasn´t there a dish using a dough of rye flour and blood, cut into cubes and fried? I never found some to try, though. But I would love to. Being german, raised on blood sausage, and all.
Fun fact: there is a popular drink (at least in Germany among those who like meade) that's called Vikings blood or Dragonblood. Its simply Meade with sour cherry juice, but it's delicious.
they have it here in the states too.... very sour (which I like) you need to look in the specialty/crafted beer section. (Mine came in brown glass bottles with fancy labeling).
@@randomsandwichian I hear regular bathing and fashion trends have been a thing in many places all over the world at various times, such as China and Al-Andalus.
Picture a tall, blonde Scandinavian gentleman dressed in a sharp suit and smelling of Hai Karate and testosterone strolling into a Montreal discotheque in the 1970s. Same deal.
2 года назад+81
We still use blood in a lot of things in Scandinavia. My favorite is blodpalt. Which is basically dough of blood wheat and seasoning, then boiled. Usually eaten with pork and lingonberry.
I swear, Max is doing certain recipes now just so he can put in a hardtack reference. Time to start building the Drinking History Drinking Game for Drinking!
The tapping sound of the hardtack needs to be added to the channel's theme music and possibly played at the very end of each segment as an indication of the formal closure. 🤣😆😳
Max's butcher, sighing as he sees him walking past the front window and into the shop: What do you need this time, Max? Max: *B L O O D* Butcher, nodding: Gotcha.
I guess that the iron flavor dissipates a lot when cooked into soups or in this case, baked into bread, so it's actually a remarkably clever way of saving perfectly good protein, and making your food just a little bit more nutritious.
I don't think any protein survives the baking, but it surely does decompose into a ton of minerals (in perfect composition) and salt (which is also essential)
@@supersonictumbleweed I googled the subject. "Is blood protein destroyed by cooking" gave no relevant results, but simply "is protein destroyed by cooking" gave them. Protein gets denaturalized by cooking, its molecular shape is unraveled, which change the stuff texture, but makes it more digestible and increases the amount of calories you get from protein food. What gets destroyed or diminished by cooking is mostly vitamin C. Most interesting.
@@MariaMartinez-researcher oh, so it's not breaking down all the way to minerals but doesn't survive as a protein either? Well I learned something today
@@supersonictumbleweed chemical composition of a protein is mostly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. Even if it broke down to atoms there wouldn't be "minerals" (I'm not even sure what you mean by that but I'm guessing things like calcium, potassium, magnesium, sodium). Anyway, if a protein breaks down completely you are left with aminoacids, which are very important essential nutrients that would be very very welcome in bread if you were part of a seafaring culture.
@@supersonictumbleweed Proteins survive in a changed state. Like, a boiled egg becomes hard. It's still full of protein. I would say the main way in which proteins and all food stuff gets decomposed to their minimal parts is digestion. There, proteins and the rest get reduced to the molecular level. It's a really fascinating and immensely complex process. No way I could even start to explain here something I myself don't know in its entirety. Wikipedia to the rescue? ✌😁
This is one of the most informative, highest quality, high end productions I've ever seen on RUclips. What an amazing thing you've created Max! This should be on TV
@@TastingHistory I agree you are completely awesome beyond words. And while I would totally watch every TV episode a dozen times. I would hate to see how terrible the TV people would treat you. I feel they are not friendly people and so many good shows are ruined by getting a TV show. Hopefully that makes sense and is not offensive. It is not intended in that way. I just think you are too sweet and amazing to be in the TV headache.
15:00 important thing you left out there: During that insult fest of his, Loki admitted to the murder of Baldur, which is the actual reason the Gods decided to punish him
When i was a kid my family put a large kettle under a fresh killed deer, cattle or pig. Anything really. They would gather its blood and slowly cook it down with acorn and oats while the brain and skin were removed for tanning. By the time the intestines were nicely cleaned and set in a brine the butchering was usually done. The blood mix was thickened and any spices went in as it was set to cool. Then it was stuffed into the intestines and either frozen, smoked or grilled same day. No waste! I bet they would love blood bread with their blood sausage.
We actually still eat this in Sweden and its called palt bröd or " palt bread" . It´s not that common now though but my grandma made it once in a while. :)
Im german, my bf is swedish and i wanna try and learn traditional recipes for him ^^ its always nice seeing a lot of it is similiar to german dishes too.
I'm Danish (and an archaeologist) and this made me so happy! Your pronunciation is really good! . Also Viking Blood (Vikingeblod) is pretty good brand of commercial mead, though it can be too sweet for my taste, but it's perfect with desserts. Nothing beats homemade or those purchased from independent breweries. Which there are A LOT of here. A couple of years ago my friends and I made an elderflower mead, which is a popular flavoring. So delicious!
A dane here i would reccomend trying elderflower berry mead its very different from elderflower itself but it was delicious i havent tried more then some elderberry juice (self harvested) in some homemade mead and it was amazing
This brought back memories. My parents were Swede-Finns from the Ostrobothnia area in Finland. They were poor growing up (esp. Dad's family) and didn't waste a thing. Blood bread, blood soup, blood sausage, and even blood pudding were sources of nutrition. I guess it was a treat after butchering. One day, probably in the early '60s, I came home to find a pan of what I thought was chocolate brownies. I cut myself a slice, and knew immediately it wasn't my beloved chocolate brownies but metallic blood bread! Thanks, Max. I love your videos, and the historical context is always fascinating.
”Palt bread” is a blood bread traditional to parts of northern Sweden, blood pudding is still a traditional food, not served as much anymore though. Blood sausage too.
LOL, despite growing up in Wallingford, I'd never heard of 'John Of Wallingford'. I just looked it up and realised he came from a Priory that was about 100 yards from where I lived (demolished centuries ago, but the site is documented).
Max is literally just some dude in his kitchen talking to his camera. But he does a fantastic job of transporting me to another time, making me laugh and reigniting my passion for cooking (and drinking!) Love your work!
As a professor of Medieval Literature, I'm rather impressed by your pronunciation. Have you ever been to Iceland? I've been many times, but never attended the Þórrablót in February. Hey, maybe you should try making hákarl, the fermented shark!
Well, we still eat blood bread, so I'm not sure evolution is the right word. Blood bread, blood sausage, and blood pudding (which is basically the same thing as the British black pudding). It's perfectly good and very tasty food, although I can definitely see how someone might find it weird at first.
I love how the English were annoying at the Vikings for stealing their women by bathing, brushing their hair, and putting on clean clothes. Frivolous? No, you gotta delouse your hair and put on a fresh pair of knickers if you want to compete
Or, as the Old English allegedly did, you can just slaughter every man who has washed his pits this month! That's surely easier than learning how to use soap
@@eedwardgrey2 Probably true, but also keep in mind that the Arabs and Persians of this period had an even higher standard of hygiene for religious reasons. Not to mention that he mainly chronicled the Rus', and so that may have been their practice but not that of other Scandinavians.
MAX you picked one of my favorite pieces from Adam of Bremen! I'm a Norse historian and the reason it was 9 years, 9 days, 9 sacrifices was in representation of Odin! He hung from Yggdrasil for 9 days to learn the staining of the runes (magic). Also also! In my research it was argued that the reason it was male sacrifices was to represent male magic practitioner's. I'm sorry this is literally my bread and butter 😅😅 and I get really excited.
@@vtr0104 I specialized in magic, gender, and law in medieval Iceland 😊 I know the systems of magic and myth like the back of my hand. It all depends on what you wanna know. If I don't know specifics I know sources 😁
@@aprilcoursey4533 sure! Iceland has so many rich primary sources that were written a generation outside of the Viking Age. 😊 I also fell in love with the Icelandic Sagas 😅
What most Americans don't understand is how benign blood is in most dishes. I've tried blood cakes and blood stews and they are all quite mild flavors. Very interesting dish. Thanks for the great content as usual!
@@ThePapaja1996 It isn't illegal here. You can buy blood from butchers and at some markets. You can buy food that has blood as an ingredient, too, like blood sausages. There are some extra requirements about the source and handling of blood for human consumption, but it's legal. It's just rare because most Americans find the idea of it kind of icky.
I'm thinking old meets new here. Presumably, being a sourdough, the bread is mildly acidic. Blood is already used in some desserts because of some earthy mineraly notes, in conjunction with egg-like thickening. By all accounts, dark cocoa goes well with blood. I'm imagining that supplementing the honey with two additional tablespoons of unsulphured, blackstrap molasses, adding a tablespoon of alkalized cocoa powder to the flour, and replacing the lukewarm water with an equivalent amount of lukewarm apple juice would make for a very rich and sweet brown bread that would go perfectly with rapé (made in a previous episode) or quince jam.
@@DoughBoy45 Don't be down on yourself. If you want to explore more of the foods the world has to offer, this is a good channel to watch all of the videos. In addition, if you check out some articles about reducing food waste, or unusual ways to use common ingredients, it can be a great inspiration. Another thing to consider, if you really want to broaden your horizons, is to get your hands on uncommon flavoring ingredients and using them to produce spins on common/cheap ingredients. A perfect example of this...making vanilla fudge is easy and rather plain...but is an excellent vehicle for many other flavors. I made rose fudge a few weeks ago by just adding rosewater and red food die to an existing recipe. If you have an adventurous palette, you can make incredibly diverse dishes by just having a well-stocked spice cupboard.
I will actually try this recipe with Goat blood. In my culture, we make blood sausages with Goat or sheep blood, and it's absolutely delicious. Thank you so much for this.
This is interesting. This definitely would've been a good way to use up the extra blood from slaughter, and add some nutritional value - minerals (including iron) and vitamins - to simple bread. The fact that blood doesn't have any flavor in this recipe could be a benefit if you don't like flavor of blood.
We still eat something similar to blood bread here in Sweden it’s called “blod pudding” We used to get it as school food when I was young, it’s pretty tasty.
Wife: What are you watching? Me: A history show where he makes food from olden times. Wife: What's he making there? Me: Some kind of bread. Max: Pour the blood through a sieve just to make sure there are no coagulated bits. If your blood has coagulated too much, put it in a blender.. Wife: What the hell???!!!!!
Fun fact. Þorrablót (blot) is currently going on here in Iceland, Þorrinn is the fourth month of winter and blót is the festival that celebrates it. We no longer sacrifice things to the gods, but we do meet up and eat various traditional icelandic food (some great, some disgusting). Its all fun.
My family used to serve icelandic dishes, I hated pickled shark as a kid, my family is from England, Scottland and Iceland but I live in Canada, my family and their weird food man.🤣
@@dontmindme5189 haha, yeah. The picked shark is a bit... acquired taste :P I dont like it much personally, but I can eat it with a straight face whenever foreign friends visit and I can bluff and say we eat it all the time, while we actually very rarely touch the stuff
I've had the Korean version of pickled shark (hongeo or 홍어) and it was awful lol. Love Korean food in general but the strong ammonia smell and taste was too much for me
We actually still eat blood bread in Sweden, although a lot thinner, more like a cracker. We soak them in boiling water and eat them with pork and a béchamel sauce. A traditional meal known as Paltbröd. Actually really tasty :)
i invite you to a viking feast at the longhouse in the picture you chose in the video, its actually my old workplace. and just a fun note, we still have bread made with blood in Sweden
@@visassess8607 or actually i took care of the archery and axe throwing outside, a little walk down to the sea next to our viking ships(78 foot, can carry 100 people) which is possible to take out and row if the weather is ok and there is enough people. The place is called Lofotr and is north of the artice circle in Norway :)
@@stellaeleptheriadou3062 It's kind of sweet, we eat it with lingonberry! It's callen blodpudding if you want to look it up. It's not for special occasions, for me it was a common school lunch. Some people also eat it in a bowl of milk but I've never tried it that way myself.
I imagine a dad making it when his child's date comes over and then pulling the date aside saying "you better treat my kid well unless you want it to be your blood i use next time" xD
Okay lords starting out as really important bakers is one of the coolest medieval history facts I’ve heard all months! And I’m literally taking a medieval history course right now.
@@curiousKuro16 farmed yes because it is the land and crops that gives you the money to be powerful. Milling was done by the women and the slaves using a quern stone until the 10th century when water and windmills became more common.
It’s just the English word though. Continental noble titles like Count came from the Romans, and the Norse word for lord, Drott, was originally a religious title as the leader of the blót.
You can still buy this bread in the grocery stores in Sweden. It is called "paltbröd" and you eat it heated in a small amount of water, with a white sauce (bechamel), fried salted pork. It is actually very tasty, altough it has gone down in popularity since my birth in the 60´s.
I really enjoyed listening to this for some reason. I don't think I would ever actually try that bread but the history behind the feasts and the bread was fun to listen to
The hard tack skit really never gets old... :D (Small suggestion for a Trinking History Episode around Christmas or New Year: Try Feuerzangenbowle/Fire Tongs Punch. Spiced Wine on a cooker, then soak a sugar loaf with strong rum, set it on fire and have it drip into the wine)
@@TaurusTheCrazyBull Well, that's ok... "löga" in Swedish can mean to clean yourself as well as bathing. It's more self cleansing than taking a swim in a pool or the ocean.
@@TaurusTheCrazyBull “lauga” in modern Icelandic means to wash, although it has pool/bath connotations, like a swimming pool is “sundlaug”. in modern Icelandic and “handlaug” is a sink. Laug is actually related to “lather” in English but the meaning is slightly different-both are related to the latin “lavare” “to wash” if I am not mistaken.
Max, I have been brewing mead since 1969 and I'm pretty good at it, so I thought I'd let you know a couple things about it. First, a very good sweet mead is made in a five gallon carboy using 18 lbs honey, a tsp white wine yeast ( in the beginning I actually could not buy wine yeast in AZ so I used bread yeast. Works just fine), a handful of raisins, warm water to the shoulder of the jug, stir it well, cover the spout with 3 layers of plastic wrap, rubber band to hold it, set in a corner of the kitchen for at least 2 months, then siphon, filter and bottle. The "Blod Mead" you had on the video was probably a similar recipe with the addition of 1 quart of hibiscus flower infusion... make it like a tea using a cup of dried hibiscus flowers. Mead made with fruit is called mellomel. I can suggest adding one of those POM bottles to a batch, maybe the one with blueberry as well as pomegranate juice. Really nice. You can reduce the portions to brew in a 1 gallon jug... I drink my mead so I like to make 5 gallons at a time. Hope this helps.
@@androcentricnomad9321 You risk making 5 gallons of something that tastes like kerosene if you use unfiltered honey because the wax will break down into nasty flavors. Raw honey may contain wild yeasts which can overwhelm your yeast and change the flavor or timing. But, that said, you can heat the honey and skim the surface and pasteurize it yourself... History says the original brewers used wild yeasts introduced by exposing the diluted honey to the air and then they saved the dregs to use the same yeasts later. Honey is very expensive so I don't advise doing the raw honey/wild yeast experiment unless you have your own hives and can spare the honey. You could try making one gallon that way and if it works you can save the dregs. That would be about 3 lbs of honey for a gallon of mead. Mellomels are mead with fruit juices, I like making a 2 cup infusion of hibiscus flowers for a beautiful ruby tone and citric highlight to the mead. You can also do well adding one of those Pom jugs of pomegranate juice to a five gallon batch. I have 5 gallons of hibiscus flavored mellomel and 5 gallons of hibiscus/pomegranate mellomel brewing in the kitchen as we speak.
Similar breads are still a part of the tradition in Sweden. It's called "blodpalt" and is often boiled before eating, together with pork and lingonberries. There are also blood sausages and other variants of blood-based foods.
We actually have some recipes in Italy that uses blood, one simple peasant dish (now is treated as a delicacy) from where I’m from is called “sanguinaccio” and is quite good
What's kind of hilarious is that apparently, if they broke a mirror, it wasn't unheard of to weave some of the shards into one's clothes. So not only were they relatively clean and well-groomed, they were flashy as fuck! No wonder all those married women wanted them.
I actually found it very respectful, considering that blood in food is still somewhat common in Scandinavia and other regions. A less generous soul would surely have made plenty of bad jokes throughout the episode, but not our Max :-)
6:11 As an aside because Max loves etymology, the modern Scandinavian (in this case Norwegian) word for Saturday is "Lørdag", which comes from Laugar (washing) and Dag (Day)
As an Englishman who's been interested in his Scandinavian heritage, all these videos have been like little glimpses into my past. And a link to find good mead! Max spoils us!!
According to The Silmarillion, it was tradition for Elven Queens to make the Lambas bread for the adventurers they and their husbands would send on quests. Given that Tolkien was also a big fan of Etymology, I guess you both took a page from the same book! love your channel, brother. God bless you
That's exactly what I thought of when I heard about Loaf Ward! Seriously more people need to read the Silmarillion. And Tolkien was also a fan of mythology and epics such as Beowulf.
Another recipe working on the logic of "waste not want not", blood has quite a few good things in it for a diet(unpalatable as its base form is) Sausage is still my preferred form of it
In Swedish, Saturday is still called Lördag = lögardag, meaning the day you had a bath. Löga being an old word for washing oneself. Thanks for the video. Edit: I just noticed that someone else in the comments has already said this. :D Oh well. Commenting for the algorithm, then.
@@maybeyourbaby6486 Find a group! If you look for local living history events or similar, you can probably find a Viking era reenactment group that would be glad to have you join them. :)
That wrestling would have been Glima, a Nordic martial art still practiced. Done standing, it's kinda a combo of Judo and Aikido. It has two forms, soft and hard. In soft, you just throw your opponent onto the ground. In hard, you can punch, elbow, head-butt, knee, and kick them while you try to throw them onto the ground. The Northmen (you're right, Viking was a verb) practiced it all winter, hence their prowess in battle. "Hardtack!" click, click
You can still find blood pudding and what is basically blood hardtack in most swedish grocery stores, although the hardtack stuff may be seasonal or something, at least my local village grocery store only has it some of the time.
Not to mention blood pancakes on decent rye flour. During my primary school they still used to serve them for lunch but not anymore for some reason. "Blodpalt" is found too squeamish a dish to pretty much everyone I suggest it to, when asked about trad food.
Yes, and järnrikebröd has blood in it too. And then there's the svartsoppa beloning to the Mårten Gås celebration in the south, so it didn't all die out with the vikings.
I can't recall seeing bread with blood in Denmark, but blood sausage is common enough, especially around Christmas. My dad loved it - we usually sliced it, heated it on a frying pan and ate it with some syrup and / or apples and sometimes with ryebread. It tastes a lot better than it sounds. In my grandparents generation they also made blood pudding, but I doubt many do so today.
Fun fact: to this day, Saturday's name literally means Washing Day in Norse languages. Apparently not only personal hygiene, but also housecleaning as well.
I still love the fact that Vikings were extremely clean, especially in regard for other European cultures at the time, whereas they are mostly portrayed as barbaric brutes with pretty braids in their hair and beards.
Dansk makes some of the best mead I've ever had, I got a bottle of their Ribe Mjød for my birthday a couple years ago and I've never found something that could beat it
agreed. ive talked at least 5 of my local liquor stores into stocking Viking Blod and Ribe as a regular thing. apparently it's insanely popular in my area!
Makes even more sense in modern swedish; "Lördag" is just short for "Lögardagen" i.e Bath Day. Same can of course be said about the norvegian or danish lørdag. While we nords nabbed monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday and sunday for our gods, it seems like the idea of praising saturn was more important than washing up for the general populace. While I'm on it, Max should really take it a step further and try to make Blodpalt. It's pretty much boiled bloodbread, most often served with smoked pork and a simple roux. Delicious.
Both bloodbread (flat) "blodbröd" and fried bloodpudding "blodpudding" is still commercially produced and eaten in the Nordic countries. The bloodpudding is escpecially popular among children as its somewhat sweet and served alongside fried bacon and lingonberry-jam.
We still eat that bread today. It's called paltbröd and you are supposed to dry it after baking, then boil it and serve it with a white or onion sauce and "stekfläsk" (similar to bacon).
@@randomfactsthatdontmatter3466 It makes the bread soft as it is dried. If you search for "Picnic och paltbröd med fläsk" here on RUclips, you can see a video of it. RUclips doesn't allow me to post links.
That hardtack clip is just a gift that keeps on giving. Love hyour videos as laways Max. So enjoying having such a wonderful repository to dip into when I want something fun to try!
Viking Blod Mead available at Curiada:
bit.ly/MaxMillerSpiritsCollection
I binged all your videos this week
They are amazing
I've had this at a summer solstice festival some years ago. It's better than youd think.
Max, definitely check out the ginger version of this from the same meadery!
Have to do a salted cod recipe.
I swear i'll never get tired of the hardtack clacking cutaway gag, no matter how many times it crops up.
It's even funnier in newer videos because the quality doesn't catch up and overtime, it looks so out of place
@@boid9761 Soon enough the gag will be just as much of a historical piece as the bread itself!
@@Hatsworthful A 4k video suddenly having a 480p cutaway joke
Thought i was the only one
Meme status achieved
At first I was like "Why would they use blood to preserve bread if it didn't have much shelf life" and then I realized the bread was to preserve the blood. Pretty metal.
It looks kinda fun to eat, kinda like food thats been dyed
@@username172 u like metal taste? If u have good taste u will also taste sweet, sour and salty
I've been looking for this comment
@@APersonOnRUclipsX What's wrong with the taste of a heart attack?
Literally feasting on the blood of your enemies!
The idea of a Viking baker sounds both terrifying AND like the basis of the best Food Network cooking show ever!
Dnd idea. Barbarian baker that seeks dragon blood for ultimate bread.
🤣
do you not remember Swedish Meal Time?
Just give Matty Matheson an axe already!
There is/was a UK cooking show called The Hairy Bikers. I think they had some Viking stuff, if I recall right. Might want to check that out. :)
"Any blood will do"
*uses the blood of yesterdays raid*
I wonder if they would do that. If I recall correctly eating anything derived from a person can make you sick. Could be wrong.
@@FireSwan16t "can make you sick" sure, but there are still tribes that practice cannibalism to this day.
"Ah, my old man Olaf, why would we need two priests if the sacrifice only demands a single one?" (implying that vikings made human sacrifices)
You want to have prions? Because thats how you get prions.
@@Chillerll Unlikely, since it's blood. Eating brains, on other hand, is quite risky in that regard.
I absolutely love the ongoing "Hard tack" *clack clack* joke. Everytime I hear the topic of hard track coming up, I look forward to that *clack clack* and then laughter ensues!
My wife mentioned hard tack in a conversation the other day, I said "clack clack" and snickered to myself. The whole family looked at me like I was insane, so I took over the TV to load up the video on youtube.
I maintain that we need official Tasting History hard tack biscuits as merch so we can clack along with Max😆
Everytime I read or heard "hard tack" I lough out loud. It's glorious.
@@Taolan8472 The brain just autocompletes it at this point.
Its the facial expression in the clip that gets me
Phrases one doesn't expect in baking - "There's a lot of blood in this bread."
Unless you're a viking.... or perhaps klingon
r/brandnewsentence
"Any kind of blood will work"
@@victorconway444 "The cool thing is, you don't need to add any salt to this recipe because the blood has plenty in it."
"Yeah I had a bit of an accident with the knife"
The hard tack clap will NEVER get old...
I swear he says Hard tack *thunk thunk* as often as he possibly can just to put it in there...
Neither will the hard tack lol
just like proper hard tack - it can work well for years. If you are hungry just look on this and decide 'naah, I can go with some diet for a bit longer, maybe I will find something edible'.
Thanks to this particular recipe I understood fully dwarven bread from Discworld ;)
Max, does crack the hell out of me, whenever he does the hardtack clap.😂😂
Much like the hard tack itself.
As a professional baker who is also of Danish descent, I got an AMAZING opportunity a few years ago. A touring Viking exhibit came through my town and landed at my local museum for a season. They had loaves of bread in this exhibit. Local bakeries were given the basic components of the bread that had been identified. Since this exhibit was close to my heart and my heritage, my bakery gave me the challenge to recreate the bread. We featured it while the exhibit was in town. It was so much fun and a great challenge. And it felt so awesome to reconnect with my ancestors.
ordet viking består av personer från området Viken, som syftar på området främst omkring Oslofjorden i Norge samt Bohuslän i Sverige. Området motsvarar i stort dagens norska fylken Vestfold, Akershus och Østfold. I Sverige omfattar området dagens Bohuslän till Göta älv i sydöst, inklusive hela Hisingen. ni är daner inte viking. mina färfäder var vikingr eller viking era var daner
That is so cool!!
I love white cultures.
Weirdest wording of it, you could have just said, "I love cultures!"@@AQS521
I love that the Hard Tack clip is just a meme now, inserted whenever possible. Please continue!
*CLACK-CLACK*
I love his expression too
It just never gets old...
So do I...please continue.
I love how the dough changed colour as you kneaded it because the blood oxidised, or basically rusted.
Rust'tic bread, HAH!
@@LazyLifeIFreak urghhh you beat me to the joke!
@@LazyLifeIFreak (:
HIGHLY recommend everyone go read the story of Loki's flyting at Aegir's feast. Loki just delivers one absolutely devastating revelation after another, made worse by the fact that what he says about each person is all true. The god Njörðr at one point basically says "I don't need to hear all this from some degenerate pervert who used his powers to get pregnant and bear children." And Loki responds "I'M a degenerate pervert? What about the time you got captured in war and all of the enemy's women pissed in your mouth? AND you had a kid with your own sister." It's amazing. If you're ever in a situation where someone can remind people that multiple people pissed in your mouth you need to shut up and leave.
Here is the passage:
"33. "Small ill does it work | though a woman may have A lord or a lover or both;But a wonder it is | that this womanish god Comes hither, though babes he has borne."
34. "Be silent, Njorth; | thou wast eastward sent,To the gods as a hostage given;And the daughters of Hymir | their privy had When use did they make of thy mouth."
35. "Great was my gain, | though long was I gone,
To the gods as a hostage given;
The son did I have | whom no man hates,
And foremost of gods is found."
36. "Give heed now, Njorth, | nor boast too high,
No longer I hold it hid;
With thy sister hadst thou | so fair a son,
Thus hadst thou no worse a hope.""
😎
And Lokasenna is meant to be performed in a rhythmic style. So...basically an epic rap battle lol.😎
Wow! that's a degenerate story! Thanks for sharing! LOL! ;-)
Loki gets pregnant?
Swede here. This stuff is still being eaten , or at least it was when I was a kid in the 1970s. My aunt made "paltbröd" every midsummer ("palt" being an archaic word for "blood", and "bröd" meaning "bread"). I haven't eaten it for decades and I was never that fond of it as a kid, but it's not a dead custom, it's still part of Scandinavian cousine.
Another swede here can confirm this. A classic is to serve it with crispy porkbelly and bechamel.
That’s cool brudda thanks for sharing
“Paltbröd med fläsk” is a classic. You can still buy plat bread in well sorted shops today. For the dish you use dried palt bread that you soak in salted water for an hour and then cook, some do it in water but my old mum used milk. Then you serve it with bechamel sauce and fried salted pork rind. My mum had caramelized onion in the bechamel, making it into a onion sauce thus making it even tastier.
My mum has passed away years ago and it was a very long time since I ate “paltbröd med fläsk” as I haven’t seen it been served at any restaurant in ages. I might try to make it myself, but I don’t think the rest of my family remembers it with the same fond memories!😂
Had it as a kid at my aunt house a few Times. Its remeber it as okey, I more went for the salted pork 😂
"Blodbröd med fläsk" We had it last week, up north we bake it as flatbread and then dip it in porkstock before eating.
as a long time viewer, I am never disappointed by your sense of humor.
"You can do these things, when you're Beowulf, but YOU should not do these things."
Just ask Grendel and his mother
He was the Chadest of Chads.
Max has Pavloved me into expecting that “click click” sound whenever I hear the word hardtack
**click click**
You know it's well-rooted in your brain when you get disappointed that it doesn't appear on other channels.
You've been doing Tasting History for, like, a year and a half now, haven't you? Where has the time gone?? SO happy for your success! A wonderful niche to find!
It's really ingenious, isn't it? A lot of people find history presentations to be tedious and boring, so it makes sense that appealing to their collective sense of humor and universal love of food would enjoy such success. Not to downplay the enormity of the production process, of course.
And I love the collaborations you've been involved in! Especially Townsends, but also Ancient Recipes with Sohla and Chef Tony among others! This channel resulted from COVID interrupting your life plans, and instead turned into a completely new way to reach out and integrate people through a shared interest in cooking and history!
@@trenae77
He began the channel before the sham broke out in the USA.
2 years
@@anti-ethniccleansing465 the plandemic
one thing i would add to this, Rye is the more common flour source in the areas this recipe comes from so Rye flour would probably make a more traditional loaf.
yes! For sure it was rye.
I wonder if blood ergotamine is better than regular ergotamine. Might explain berserkers!
"There is a lot of blood in this bread" is a sentence that is pretty alarming outside of the context of this particular foodstuff.
@L_B42 __ it kind of is. Because out of context bread would be referred to as "money" which means you killed someone for the money or something around those lines. I could be wrong though.
@@trijetz3562 especially if someone misheard it as ‘on’ instead of ‘in’
Remember, that’s a sign of a smart criminal and ur screwed over
you just recontexualised my whole childhood...
one of the try guys chose to put blood in his cinnamon buns . . .
@@trijetz3562 Dough would probably be more concerning then bread, in that sense.
max I wanted to personally thank you I left my toxic job and these past 2 days I have been without stress and able to start healing. When you left Disney to do tasting history full time I know it wasn't the same but you had the courage to change and you motivated me into the same thing.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart
Hey man, good on ya! I wish you the utmost luck in healing quickly.
I love this! Congratulations and best of luck.
Best of luck! Your courage & self live are an inspiration!
Good for you. Happy healing and wishing you the best moving forward. That took courage; be very proud of yourself.
The metallic smell of blood actually comes from the iron interacting with the oil from your skin. Trying smelling a completely clean penny, it won’t have a smell. Then try rubbing your fingers on it.
...NileRed?
@@62crowsinananunusuallyshin97 ?
Pennies are copper and zinc, but I assume it is the same concept.
@@fakemint934 NileRed is a chemistry youtuber. He did a video a while back breaking down why we associate that particular smell with pennies/copper.
@@JariDawnchild I wasn’t aware Nigel did a video about that.
This channel covers my 2 favorite things. History and food.
Same, pal 🤜🏼🤛🏼
I think I used to eat a "crispbread" version of this bread at school lunches in northern Sweden, and I agree that you barely notice the blood flavour at all. I remember even being confused and disgusted when a teacher pointed out to us that the dark colour comes from the large amount of blood in it. Got over it pretty quickly though since it's so delicious!
You're so lucky. Bloodwurst sandwiches were one of my favourite school lunches until my parents explained what it was made from.
Paltbröd?
I bet its very healthy too!
In Finland we have blood pancakes, verilettu, quite a common dish in my school years and early work life. Not sure if people still eat much of that but yeah, it's good :)
@@MikkoMurmeli Haha, yes, I remembered those during the video and wondered if there was a common tradition behind it. I know them from a friend who bought them at a supermarket and, not being able to read finnish, mistook them for chocolate bisquits. We noticed quickly. But ever since I learned about lightly frying them and eating them warm, I absolutely love those. Also in or around Oulu, wasn´t there a dish using a dough of rye flour and blood, cut into cubes and fried? I never found some to try, though. But I would love to. Being german, raised on blood sausage, and all.
Fun fact: there is a popular drink (at least in Germany among those who like meade) that's called Vikings blood or Dragonblood. Its simply Meade with sour cherry juice, but it's delicious.
they have it here in the states too.... very sour (which I like) you need to look in the specialty/crafted beer section. (Mine came in brown glass bottles with fancy labeling).
Ist aber oft zu süß, finde ich...
I've made it it's pretty good
Mmm mead
That's what he drinks in this video...
Wow, women have been appreciating a man who showers and styles his hair a bit since the 12th century.
Cleaning yourself and grooming a bit? What sort of effeminate vapidness is this?!
/s
And yet some men still refuse to listen
So Nords were the OG metrosexual male?
@@randomsandwichian I hear regular bathing and fashion trends have been a thing in many places all over the world at various times, such as China and Al-Andalus.
Picture a tall, blonde Scandinavian gentleman dressed in a sharp suit and smelling of Hai Karate and testosterone strolling into a Montreal discotheque in the 1970s. Same deal.
We still use blood in a lot of things in Scandinavia. My favorite is blodpalt. Which is basically dough of blood wheat and seasoning, then boiled. Usually eaten with pork and lingonberry.
Do you use human or animal blood?
@@GrainMuncheranimal I’m fairly sure; I suspect using human blood would be illegal for one
@@GrainMuncher imagine going to the blood bank to ask for this 🤡 xd
@@GrainMuncher the authorities require i answer animal blood
I swear, Max is doing certain recipes now just so he can put in a hardtack reference. Time to start building the Drinking History Drinking Game for Drinking!
May the hardtack references never end!
It’s the best reference
Tasting History with Max Miller, featuring hardtack from Pirates may cry
The tapping sound of the hardtack needs to be added to the channel's theme music and possibly played at the very end of each segment as an indication of the formal closure. 🤣😆😳
Take a shot every time the hard tack clip comes up.
Max's butcher, sighing as he sees him walking past the front window and into the shop: What do you need this time, Max?
Max: *B L O O D*
Butcher, nodding: Gotcha.
Blood contains mostly all the nutrients a human needs, its easily used in cooking and animals are full of the stuff!
It’s common for people to buy blood at a butchers lmao
I would think the butcher would be excited when he sees Max. Like: it's that guy that does special things that you can't get at a supermarket.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
@@kronoskr2597 SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE
I guess that the iron flavor dissipates a lot when cooked into soups or in this case, baked into bread, so it's actually a remarkably clever way of saving perfectly good protein, and making your food just a little bit more nutritious.
I don't think any protein survives the baking, but it surely does decompose into a ton of minerals (in perfect composition) and salt (which is also essential)
@@supersonictumbleweed I googled the subject. "Is blood protein destroyed by cooking" gave no relevant results, but simply "is protein destroyed by cooking" gave them. Protein gets denaturalized by cooking, its molecular shape is unraveled, which change the stuff texture, but makes it more digestible and increases the amount of calories you get from protein food. What gets destroyed or diminished by cooking is mostly vitamin C.
Most interesting.
@@MariaMartinez-researcher oh, so it's not breaking down all the way to minerals but doesn't survive as a protein either?
Well I learned something today
@@supersonictumbleweed chemical composition of a protein is mostly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. Even if it broke down to atoms there wouldn't be "minerals" (I'm not even sure what you mean by that but I'm guessing things like calcium, potassium, magnesium, sodium). Anyway, if a protein breaks down completely you are left with aminoacids, which are very important essential nutrients that would be very very welcome in bread if you were part of a seafaring culture.
@@supersonictumbleweed Proteins survive in a changed state. Like, a boiled egg becomes hard. It's still full of protein. I would say the main way in which proteins and all food stuff gets decomposed to their minimal parts is digestion. There, proteins and the rest get reduced to the molecular level.
It's a really fascinating and immensely complex process. No way I could even start to explain here something I myself don't know in its entirety. Wikipedia to the rescue? ✌😁
Vikings blod is what I got me drunk my 21st birthday and remains one of my favorite drinks
"As I've often said I am just wild about etymology."
Listen, Max. I need you to know that I love you. 😅
Aren't we all just in love with him. Don't ya just wish max was your best friend. I mean that in the most non-stalkerish way possible! :)
@@mellie4174 , and I loved it, when Max said, he did not want to knead the dough, because, well, "it's gross".
@@mellie4174 I'd love to be friends with him too. Etymology is fun and fascinating. Any kind of non-modern history is fascinating really.
This is one of the most informative, highest quality, high end productions I've ever seen on RUclips. What an amazing thing you've created Max! This should be on TV
Oh shucks, thanks Machop!
@@TastingHistory I agree you are completely awesome beyond words. And while I would totally watch every TV episode a dozen times. I would hate to see how terrible the TV people would treat you. I feel they are not friendly people and so many good shows are ruined by getting a TV show.
Hopefully that makes sense and is not offensive. It is not intended in that way. I just think you are too sweet and amazing to be in the TV headache.
15:00 important thing you left out there: During that insult fest of his, Loki admitted to the murder of Baldur, which is the actual reason the Gods decided to punish him
I heard it was because he claimed to have slept with all of their wives and none of the wives refuted him.
I was gonna say it then I saw your comment.
@@frostbite0707 he probably did, that's just Loki. But according to the sagas I read, he was tied down for blabbering his mouth juuust a bit too much.
When i was a kid my family put a large kettle under a fresh killed deer, cattle or pig. Anything really. They would gather its blood and slowly cook it down with acorn and oats while the brain and skin were removed for tanning. By the time the intestines were nicely cleaned and set in a brine the butchering was usually done. The blood mix was thickened and any spices went in as it was set to cool. Then it was stuffed into the intestines and either frozen, smoked or grilled same day. No waste! I bet they would love blood bread with their blood sausage.
We actually still eat this in Sweden and its called palt bröd or " palt bread" . It´s not that common now though but my grandma made it once in a while. :)
"Not as common" means you can still find it in most larger food markets.
@@ob7514 Very good way to get your iron, though personally I prefer to take my pig's blood in the form of black tofu.
It brings back a lot of memories 😁
Im german, my bf is swedish and i wanna try and learn traditional recipes for him ^^ its always nice seeing a lot of it is similiar to german dishes too.
But the bread today tastes of blood and has the weirdest consistency. If it was as shown above I would it it. I eat blood pudding so... Waste not.
I'm Danish (and an archaeologist) and this made me so happy! Your pronunciation is really good! . Also Viking Blood (Vikingeblod) is pretty good brand of commercial mead, though it can be too sweet for my taste, but it's perfect with desserts. Nothing beats homemade or those purchased from independent breweries. Which there are A LOT of here. A couple of years ago my friends and I made an elderflower mead, which is a popular flavoring. So delicious!
Why are commercial meads so sweet... Are all meads sweet in the north? I make my mead nice and dry. With mango.
@@ramonbril Blasphemy
A dane here i would reccomend trying elderflower berry mead its very different from elderflower itself but it was delicious i havent tried more then some elderberry juice (self harvested) in some homemade mead and it was amazing
Me as a swede loves mjöd
cool that you are an archaeologist what kinda places have you been to?
This brought back memories. My parents were Swede-Finns from the Ostrobothnia area in Finland. They were poor growing up (esp. Dad's family) and didn't waste a thing. Blood bread, blood soup, blood sausage, and even blood pudding were sources of nutrition. I guess it was a treat after butchering. One day, probably in the early '60s, I came home to find a pan of what I thought was chocolate brownies. I cut myself a slice, and knew immediately it wasn't my beloved chocolate brownies but metallic blood bread! Thanks, Max. I love your videos, and the historical context is always fascinating.
From my point of view blood sausage is still relatively big in Germany
”Palt bread” is a blood bread traditional to parts of northern Sweden, blood pudding is still a traditional food, not served as much anymore though. Blood sausage too.
@@mortechrome we still it blodpudding in school
Bloodsausage or verimakkara is regional delicacy in Tampere. I hate the stuff.
I love blood sausage! In Ireland we always put it with a Sunday breakfast/Ulster Fry, it's my fave part 👌
Just cannot get away from the blood magic. It has been with us for seemingly ever, even onto today.
John of Wallingford was just mad that he couldn’t comb his own hair and magically appeal to the noble ladies
Definitely sour grapes
Agreed - I'd take a Dane who combs his hair and washes over a dirty sourpuss anytime
Early Incels
LOL, despite growing up in Wallingford, I'd never heard of 'John Of Wallingford'. I just looked it up and realised he came from a Priory that was about 100 yards from where I lived (demolished centuries ago, but the site is documented).
So when they aren't fighting with nuns, they were pooh pooh-ing the Nords?
Max is literally just some dude in his kitchen talking to his camera. But he does a fantastic job of transporting me to another time, making me laugh and reigniting my passion for cooking (and drinking!)
Love your work!
He did work as an entertainer at Disneyland so obviously he has skills and training.
As a professor of Medieval Literature, I'm rather impressed by your pronunciation. Have you ever been to Iceland? I've been many times, but never attended the Þórrablót in February. Hey, maybe you should try making hákarl, the fermented shark!
Dont do it! Its pissed on!
I’ve tried it before, it’s surprisingly not too bad
Where the hell is he going to get shark.
@@palharaldrindal4871 Its not generally pissed on, the Greenland Shark just has very high ammonia\urea content so it tastes\smells like it has been.
@@pancrepe5576 fish for it duh
In Poland we mix blood with groats and pack it into guts like sausage. It's quite tasty. It's called "kaszanka".
in the north we also have a soup called "czernina" made of goose blood
From blood bread to minimalist furniture.. Crazy evolution!
Why not both?
Well, we still eat blood bread, so I'm not sure evolution is the right word. Blood bread, blood sausage, and blood pudding (which is basically the same thing as the British black pudding). It's perfectly good and very tasty food, although I can definitely see how someone might find it weird at first.
@@egodreas Blood sausages are my favourite type of sausages
You have the perfect combination of cooking, history lessons and humor to make it actually fun to learn about these things! Love this channel
I love how the English were annoying at the Vikings for stealing their women by bathing, brushing their hair, and putting on clean clothes. Frivolous? No, you gotta delouse your hair and put on a fresh pair of knickers if you want to compete
They were probably mad cause they didn't like bathing lol!
Or, as the Old English allegedly did, you can just slaughter every man who has washed his pits this month! That's surely easier than learning how to use soap
Ibn Fadlan , critized the Vikings for the opposite reason ; he confirms they bathed daily but they used the same water they also sneezed in.
@@eedwardgrey2 the bar was on the floor in Europe 🤢
@@eedwardgrey2 Probably true, but also keep in mind that the Arabs and Persians of this period had an even higher standard of hygiene for religious reasons. Not to mention that he mainly chronicled the Rus', and so that may have been their practice but not that of other Scandinavians.
I love the cut scene every time you mention hard tack
MAX you picked one of my favorite pieces from Adam of Bremen! I'm a Norse historian and the reason it was 9 years, 9 days, 9 sacrifices was in representation of Odin! He hung from Yggdrasil for 9 days to learn the staining of the runes (magic). Also also! In my research it was argued that the reason it was male sacrifices was to represent male magic practitioner's.
I'm sorry this is literally my bread and butter 😅😅 and I get really excited.
A Norse historian, you say.... What else do you know? :|
@@vtr0104 I specialized in magic, gender, and law in medieval Iceland 😊 I know the systems of magic and myth like the back of my hand. It all depends on what you wanna know. If I don't know specifics I know sources 😁
May I ask why you decided on Iceland instead of Scandinavia?
@@aprilcoursey4533 sure! Iceland has so many rich primary sources that were written a generation outside of the Viking Age. 😊 I also fell in love with the Icelandic Sagas 😅
I see :) Thanks for the response! I'm reading Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman at the moment. Cheers! Or shall I say, skol?
What most Americans don't understand is how benign blood is in most dishes. I've tried blood cakes and blood stews and they are all quite mild flavors. Very interesting dish. Thanks for the great content as usual!
blood food is illagal in usa to
@@ThePapaja1996 It isn't illegal here. You can buy blood from butchers and at some markets. You can buy food that has blood as an ingredient, too, like blood sausages. There are some extra requirements about the source and handling of blood for human consumption, but it's legal. It's just rare because most Americans find the idea of it kind of icky.
@@ThePapaja1996 we can get drunk and smoke until our liver and lungs are destroyed but no blood in food or raw milk. Our hypocrisy knows no bounds.
I usually do a slice of black pudding (blood sausage) an egg and some toast as a staple breakfast in a hurry.
Those foods sound like stuff you'd find in resident evil or similar horror games
I'm thinking old meets new here. Presumably, being a sourdough, the bread is mildly acidic. Blood is already used in some desserts because of some earthy mineraly notes, in conjunction with egg-like thickening. By all accounts, dark cocoa goes well with blood. I'm imagining that supplementing the honey with two additional tablespoons of unsulphured, blackstrap molasses, adding a tablespoon of alkalized cocoa powder to the flour, and replacing the lukewarm water with an equivalent amount of lukewarm apple juice would make for a very rich and sweet brown bread that would go perfectly with rapé (made in a previous episode) or quince jam.
I like the way you think. This bread on a cheese plate with very minerally, rich sausage and some fruit? Heaven.
I’ve never felt more uncivilized. YOU GUYS EAT GOOD 😫
@@DoughBoy45 Don't be down on yourself. If you want to explore more of the foods the world has to offer, this is a good channel to watch all of the videos. In addition, if you check out some articles about reducing food waste, or unusual ways to use common ingredients, it can be a great inspiration. Another thing to consider, if you really want to broaden your horizons, is to get your hands on uncommon flavoring ingredients and using them to produce spins on common/cheap ingredients. A perfect example of this...making vanilla fudge is easy and rather plain...but is an excellent vehicle for many other flavors. I made rose fudge a few weeks ago by just adding rosewater and red food die to an existing recipe. If you have an adventurous palette, you can make incredibly diverse dishes by just having a well-stocked spice cupboard.
@@HaydenX thank you so much, I’m gonna dive right into the world of gastronomy and start experimenting today! 😂
Never heard of blood in desserts, only the often delicious blood sausage. I like mine with leeks.
I will actually try this recipe with Goat blood. In my culture, we make blood sausages with Goat or sheep blood, and it's absolutely delicious. Thank you so much for this.
"...consisted of insulting other people, usually in verse."
So, basically a viking rap battle.
Or viking slam poetry.
The OG Dozens
"Yo mama so fat they had to send ALL the Valkyries to take her to Valhalla when she died in battle."
@@sonipitts - You win!
Or roast battle
@@sonipitts "Yo mama so ugly that Odin gouged his OTHER eye when she got to Valhalla"
This is interesting. This definitely would've been a good way to use up the extra blood from slaughter, and add some nutritional value - minerals (including iron) and vitamins - to simple bread. The fact that blood doesn't have any flavor in this recipe could be a benefit if you don't like flavor of blood.
I think its an ancient protein bread
I'd try it.
@nm9857 wow that's awesome!!
Pre-workout carboloading lmao
As a viking age reenactor, literally every feast I've attended, we've been encouraged to contribute something.
there's an event in Gulf Shores In October that if the pandemic isn't preventing it
We still eat something similar to blood bread here in Sweden it’s called “blod pudding”
We used to get it as school food when I was young, it’s pretty tasty.
Wife: What are you watching?
Me: A history show where he makes food from olden times.
Wife: What's he making there?
Me: Some kind of bread.
Max: Pour the blood through a sieve just to make sure there are no coagulated bits. If your blood has coagulated too much, put it in a blender..
Wife: What the hell???!!!!!
😂
“Now, you’ll want to make sure your Blot sacrifice is clean and groomed…”
She should probably ask where you got the blood...🤔🧐
So sweet of you to bake for your wife though 🥰🍞🩸😍
I've just asked my girlfriend to make some in our breadmaker...
@@primalconvoy LOL!!!! Good luck!
Fun fact. Þorrablót (blot) is currently going on here in Iceland, Þorrinn is the fourth month of winter and blót is the festival that celebrates it. We no longer sacrifice things to the gods, but we do meet up and eat various traditional icelandic food (some great, some disgusting). Its all fun.
My family used to serve icelandic dishes, I hated pickled shark as a kid, my family is from England, Scottland and Iceland but I live in Canada, my family and their weird food man.🤣
@@dontmindme5189 haha, yeah. The picked shark is a bit... acquired taste :P
I dont like it much personally, but I can eat it with a straight face whenever foreign friends visit and I can bluff and say we eat it all the time, while we actually very rarely touch the stuff
I've had the Korean version of pickled shark (hongeo or 홍어) and it was awful lol. Love Korean food in general but the strong ammonia smell and taste was too much for me
Gravlax is pretty great though.
We actually still eat blood bread in Sweden, although a lot thinner, more like a cracker. We soak them in boiling water and eat them with pork and a béchamel sauce. A traditional meal known as Paltbröd. Actually really tasty :)
And we have blodpudding too. Which at least looks like a loaf of bread. It's usually fried in thin slices and served with lingonberry.
Down south it looks just like his but with a hole in the middle for storage.
clack clack
i invite you to a viking feast at the longhouse in the picture you chose in the video, its actually my old workplace.
and just a fun note, we still have bread made with blood in Sweden
You're old job was in a long house? That sounds awesome
@@visassess8607 or actually i took care of the archery and axe throwing outside, a little walk down to the sea next to our viking ships(78 foot, can carry 100 people) which is possible to take out and row if the weather is ok and there is enough people. The place is called Lofotr and is north of the artice circle in Norway :)
What does the blood bread nowadays taste like? And is it for certain occasions?
Was the place by any chance called borg?
@@stellaeleptheriadou3062 It's kind of sweet, we eat it with lingonberry! It's callen blodpudding if you want to look it up. It's not for special occasions, for me it was a common school lunch. Some people also eat it in a bowl of milk but I've never tried it that way myself.
"Honey, what's that growing in the kitchen"
"Oh it's just my ball of blood. We're having Cronenberg over for dinner"
I imagine a dad making it when his child's date comes over and then pulling the date aside saying "you better treat my kid well unless you want it to be your blood i use next time" xD
Mine would be, "I'm making margaritas - wait, you DID clean out the blender, and sanitized it, yes???"
@@tiem6260
I just used to show them my gun collection...
David came over again unannounced did he bring the wine this time, and some party favors
@@supergeek1418 equally as effective xD
Okay lords starting out as really important bakers is one of the coolest medieval history facts I’ve heard all months! And I’m literally taking a medieval history course right now.
It makes me wonder if they farmed/milled the grains as well!
@@curiousKuro16 farmed yes because it is the land and crops that gives you the money to be powerful. Milling was done by the women and the slaves using a quern stone until the 10th century when water and windmills became more common.
Makes a lot of sense, privileges usually comes from being in a necessary and important position.
It’s just the English word though. Continental noble titles like Count came from the Romans, and the Norse word for lord, Drott, was originally a religious title as the leader of the blót.
You can still buy this bread in the grocery stores in Sweden. It is called "paltbröd" and you eat it heated in a small amount of water, with a white sauce (bechamel), fried salted pork. It is actually very tasty, altough it has gone down in popularity since my birth in the 60´s.
I really enjoyed listening to this for some reason. I don't think I would ever actually try that bread but the history behind the feasts and the bread was fun to listen to
The hard tack skit really never gets old... :D
(Small suggestion for a Trinking History Episode around Christmas or New Year: Try Feuerzangenbowle/Fire Tongs Punch. Spiced Wine on a cooker, then soak a sugar loaf with strong rum, set it on fire and have it drip into the wine)
O_O That sounds amazing...
@@Great_Olaf5 It is. And not to be underestimated.
Max- "I promise I wont get all Viking in this episode..."
* 3 meads later
"TIL VALHALLA, arrrgggg!!"
Lol
*skål skål skål!*
Fun fact, in Iceland, Saturday is named “laugardagur”, literally, “bathing-day”.
Same thing in all Scandinavian languages. I guess bathing was more important than some roman god... ;-)
@@SteamboatW Well, cleanliness is next to godliness...
Yet despite that being It's meaning, I take showers
@@TaurusTheCrazyBull Well, that's ok... "löga" in Swedish can mean to clean yourself as well as bathing. It's more self cleansing than taking a swim in a pool or the ocean.
@@TaurusTheCrazyBull “lauga” in modern Icelandic means to wash, although it has pool/bath connotations, like a swimming pool is “sundlaug”. in modern Icelandic and “handlaug” is a sink. Laug is actually related to “lather” in English but the meaning is slightly different-both are related to the latin “lavare” “to wash” if I am not mistaken.
cooking video:❌
history lesson video:✅
Max, I have been brewing mead since 1969 and I'm pretty good at it, so I thought I'd let you know a couple things about it. First, a very good sweet mead is made in a five gallon carboy using 18 lbs honey, a tsp white wine yeast ( in the beginning I actually could not buy wine yeast in AZ so I used bread yeast. Works just fine), a handful of raisins, warm water to the shoulder of the jug, stir it well, cover the spout with 3 layers of plastic wrap, rubber band to hold it, set in a corner of the kitchen for at least 2 months, then siphon, filter and bottle. The "Blod Mead" you had on the video was probably a similar recipe with the addition of 1 quart of hibiscus flower infusion... make it like a tea using a cup of dried hibiscus flowers. Mead made with fruit is called mellomel. I can suggest adding one of those POM bottles to a batch, maybe the one with blueberry as well as pomegranate juice. Really nice. You can reduce the portions to brew in a 1 gallon jug... I drink my mead so I like to make 5 gallons at a time. Hope this helps.
That's awesome! Thank you so much for sharing!
Wow 🤩 I’ve got a new hobby now
Do you have any advice on making raw unpasteurised mead? Using raw honey of course
@@androcentricnomad9321 You risk making 5 gallons of something that tastes like kerosene if you use unfiltered honey because the wax will break down into nasty flavors. Raw honey may contain wild yeasts which can overwhelm your yeast and change the flavor or timing. But, that said, you can heat the honey and skim the surface and pasteurize it yourself... History says the original brewers used wild yeasts introduced by exposing the diluted honey to the air and then they saved the dregs to use the same yeasts later. Honey is very expensive so I don't advise doing the raw honey/wild yeast experiment unless you have your own hives and can spare the honey. You could try making one gallon that way and if it works you can save the dregs. That would be about 3 lbs of honey for a gallon of mead. Mellomels are mead with fruit juices, I like making a 2 cup infusion of hibiscus flowers for a beautiful ruby tone and citric highlight to the mead. You can also do well adding one of those Pom jugs of pomegranate juice to a five gallon batch. I have 5 gallons of hibiscus flavored mellomel and 5 gallons of hibiscus/pomegranate mellomel brewing in the kitchen as we speak.
Similar breads are still a part of the tradition in Sweden. It's called "blodpalt" and is often boiled before eating, together with pork and lingonberries. There are also blood sausages and other variants of blood-based foods.
here in argentina blood sausage is traditional in "asados" and it's fucking delicious
blodpudding :)
@@_Lumiere_ Jupp, Blodpudding.
I honestly think thats blood as ingridient is not that rare.
And, if you think about it-why would you throw away food?
@@komiks42 this is a general truth about Humanity. If we could eat it, we have eaten it since it beats starving.
As someone who's played a lot of Crusader Kings, hearing about blóts made me very happy.
Thanks for reminding me about homestuck
@@aaronhanak You got it. That's what I'm here for
I still can't fight the Homestuck.
By the way, good taste. CK is amazing.
whenever I see a homestuck pfp I think of this clip
ruclips.net/video/yY5EdTa9y08/видео.html
but you play Crusader Kings so not too shabby actually
We actually have some recipes in Italy that uses blood, one simple peasant dish (now is treated as a delicacy) from where I’m from is called “sanguinaccio” and is quite good
Loving all these records of stuff like ancient people saying "THE VIKINGS ARE TOO DAMN SEXY! STEALING OUR WIVES!" almost more than the recipes.
*Homer Simpson voice*: Stupid sexy Vikings
What's kind of hilarious is that apparently, if they broke a mirror, it wasn't unheard of to weave some of the shards into one's clothes. So not only were they relatively clean and well-groomed, they were flashy as fuck! No wonder all those married women wanted them.
That was my husband’s favorite part, too! 😂 He’s Danish-American though, so of course he did.
I love how bathing once a week and brushing your hair was all it took to be considered marriage wreckin sexy back then.
Ali the Heep LMAO!!!
My God Max's face as he contemplated having to eat that hardtack is something that will never leave my brain.
"Sadly, no runes on my horn" - never has such an innocent phrase sounded so much like a euphemism.
Alas, though my deeds may have made even the Valkyries swoon, I return home dejected, because even today I continue to sadly have no runes on my horn.
Me, looking sadly down at my horn
Weep ye women for I have found glory in the butts of men
@@fluuufffffy1514 You can toot 'em yourself.
Please never stop doing your hardtack callbacks! I laugh every time I see one!
"I can't use my drinking horn, better pull out the Nick and Nora glass instead."
-Max
The Thin Man is the best!!! ❤️
@@kristarobertson9406 Yes it is!! SO glad there are still people who watch it.
The casual way he drops the little life-hack about how to de-coagulate blood...
That just needs a John Carpenter piano score playing behind it.
I actually found it very respectful, considering that blood in food is still somewhat common in Scandinavia and other regions. A less generous soul would surely have made plenty of bad jokes throughout the episode, but not our Max :-)
@@egodreas I agree, but it was just such a chipper and matter of fact discussion of how to properly prepare blood for cooking, it just threw me.
@@Eviltwin531 lol I got the feeling it was “ let’s plow through this part and get it the heck over with before we change our minds!” 😱
6:11 As an aside because Max loves etymology, the modern Scandinavian (in this case Norwegian) word for Saturday is "Lørdag", which comes from Laugar (washing) and Dag (Day)
Cooking, history and etymology - right up my alley! Very interesting. Love your shows.
As an Englishman who's been interested in his Scandinavian heritage, all these videos have been like little glimpses into my past. And a link to find good mead! Max spoils us!!
According to The Silmarillion, it was tradition for Elven Queens to make the Lambas bread for the adventurers they and their husbands would send on quests. Given that Tolkien was also a big fan of Etymology, I guess you both took a page from the same book! love your channel, brother. God bless you
That's exactly what I thought of when I heard about Loaf Ward! Seriously more people need to read the Silmarillion.
And Tolkien was also a fan of mythology and epics such as Beowulf.
@@georged.5595 He in fact translated Beowulf at one point.
I also remembered that! And I´m happy to meet another Silmarillion lover here!
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 I'm pretty sure at some Red from OSP mentioned that Beowulf's where the names for his dwarves came from
Another recipe working on the logic of "waste not want not", blood has quite a few good things in it for a diet(unpalatable as its base form is)
Sausage is still my preferred form of it
(unpalatable as its base form is) said no vampire ever 🦇
Must be drunk fresh and hot from camel or pig. Delicious.
Never stop doing the hard tack joke, it actually makes me smile every time
In Swedish, Saturday is still called Lördag = lögardag, meaning the day you had a bath. Löga being an old word for washing oneself. Thanks for the video. Edit: I just noticed that someone else in the comments has already said this. :D Oh well. Commenting for the algorithm, then.
"they are seducing our women with their cleanliness!!!" Heavens forbid 😂😂😂
Read that last bit in Adam Ragusea's voice
"They bathe once a week! ONCE A WEEK, like catamites, Brother Liutpold! The foul Nordic femboy menace must be purged by the sword!"
They don’t mention the woman’s cleaning regiment. So chances are,…one a month maybe?
As a viking era reenactor, and the "queen" of our particular group, this episode makes me very happy.
So are you going to make some?
@@ronmaximilian6953 Yes, yes I am. How could I not now? 🙂
I wanna reenact too now, my nordic blood sings in excitement when I hear these descriptions haha
@@maybeyourbaby6486 Find a group! If you look for local living history events or similar, you can probably find a Viking era reenactment group that would be glad to have you join them. :)
Knowing everything about cooking, AND history? The prophecy has come true
That wrestling would have been Glima, a Nordic martial art still practiced. Done standing, it's kinda a combo of Judo and Aikido. It has two forms, soft and hard. In soft, you just throw your opponent onto the ground. In hard, you can punch, elbow, head-butt, knee, and kick them while you try to throw them onto the ground. The Northmen (you're right, Viking was a verb) practiced it all winter, hence their prowess in battle.
"Hardtack!" click, click
You can still find blood pudding and what is basically blood hardtack in most swedish grocery stores, although the hardtack stuff may be seasonal or something, at least my local village grocery store only has it some of the time.
Not to forget the blodpannekaker in Norway
Not to mention blood pancakes on decent rye flour. During my primary school they still used to serve them for lunch but not anymore for some reason. "Blodpalt" is found too squeamish a dish to pretty much everyone I suggest it to, when asked about trad food.
Yes, and järnrikebröd has blood in it too. And then there's the svartsoppa beloning to the Mårten Gås celebration in the south, so it didn't all die out with the vikings.
Blood pudding with lingonberries and bacon is delicious.
I can't recall seeing bread with blood in Denmark, but blood sausage is common enough, especially around Christmas. My dad loved it - we usually sliced it, heated it on a frying pan and ate it with some syrup and / or apples and sometimes with ryebread. It tastes a lot better than it sounds. In my grandparents generation they also made blood pudding, but I doubt many do so today.
Fun fact: to this day, Saturday's name literally means Washing Day in Norse languages. Apparently not only personal hygiene, but also housecleaning as well.
Cleaning a house and taking a bath on the same day?
Those Vikings could have conquered the world!
@@JonatasAdoM Well, they sort of did.
Funny in every African American household Saturday also means "wake your kids up it's time for house cleaning" day too.
I still love the fact that Vikings were extremely clean, especially in regard for other European cultures at the time, whereas they are mostly portrayed as barbaric brutes with pretty braids in their hair and beards.
The hard tack cut away is perfection.
Dansk makes some of the best mead I've ever had, I got a bottle of their Ribe Mjød for my birthday a couple years ago and I've never found something that could beat it
agreed. ive talked at least 5 of my local liquor stores into stocking Viking Blod and Ribe as a regular thing. apparently it's insanely popular in my area!
I don't remember the name of it but, they make an amazing ginger mead.
The old Norse word for Saturday, Laugardagr, literally means Bath Day.
Makes even more sense in modern swedish; "Lördag" is just short for "Lögardagen" i.e Bath Day. Same can of course be said about the norvegian or danish lørdag. While we nords nabbed monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday and sunday for our gods, it seems like the idea of praising saturn was more important than washing up for the general populace.
While I'm on it, Max should really take it a step further and try to make Blodpalt. It's pretty much boiled bloodbread, most often served with smoked pork and a simple roux. Delicious.
@@Supercharger2000 Mmm. Palt!
Those "hardtack" cuts get me every time. Classic Max!
I used Curiada to get my husband nice Irish whiskey for Christmas. It had 5 stars 🤞🤞 hope he loves it.
I was lucky enough to find a bottle of Viking Blod at a local store a year ago for thanksgiving. It was awesome, my family loved it!
Not to poopoo on Max since I love him so much... but, its way cheaper at Whole Foods. Don't hate me, Max. :(
Both bloodbread (flat) "blodbröd" and fried bloodpudding "blodpudding" is still commercially produced and eaten in the Nordic countries. The bloodpudding is escpecially popular among children as its somewhat sweet and served alongside fried bacon and lingonberry-jam.
We still eat that bread today. It's called paltbröd and you are supposed to dry it after baking, then boil it and serve it with a white or onion sauce and "stekfläsk" (similar to bacon).
Do you boil it while it's a whole loaf or do you tear it up and boil it kinda like dumplings?
@@randomfactsthatdontmatter3466 I boil the whole loaf.
@@MsAnpassad what exactly does the boiling do? Do you boil it in water? Do you drink the liquid you boil it in?
@@randomfactsthatdontmatter3466 It makes the bread soft as it is dried.
If you search for "Picnic och paltbröd med fläsk" here on RUclips, you can see a video of it. RUclips doesn't allow me to post links.
That hard tack clip is the gift that keeps on giving
Dorothy Parker quipped:"I have one drink, two at most, for three I'm under the table and four I'm under the host!" Thanks for your awesome viseos!
"Or as Tupac woulda said- pouring one out for the homies" 😂😂 this is legit the greatest channel on RUclips. Sköl!!!!!
Skol
That hardtack clip is just a gift that keeps on giving.
Love hyour videos as laways Max. So enjoying having such a wonderful repository to dip into when I want something fun to try!