Fatal Feast: How a King's Dinner Became Deadly in Medieval Times
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Jason Kingsley, the Modern Knight, discusses a hugely popular medieval food that is hardly eaten today and that killed a king and caused misery for thousands. #historyfacts #history #medieval
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When I was a kid (in the south of Germany) we occasionally had smoked eel for dinner and I really liked it. I don't remember it having a strange taste or texture, but perhaps my father picked the bones out for me.
I know that my grandfather considered eels a delicacy and he told me that once, as a boy, he and some friends were messing around in a murky riverbed. Something slithered across his feet and he got all excited, thinking it was an eel. He grabbed it and pulled it out of the water, triumphantly showing it off to his friends - only to find a snake wrapping itstelf around his arm. He was not sure who panicked more, he, the snake, or his friends. No one was harmed, but apparently the memory put him off eels. 😄
Considering that we have like 1 type of venomous snake that can't kill anyone and is scared shitless of anything that moves I vote for the poor snake that just got yanked out of the water by what it probably thought was a tree.
@@majorfallacy5926 If it was in the water it was probably a grass snake (Ringelnatter), they are completely harmless to humans. Adders aren't semi-aquatic.
"South of Germany" is vague enough that it could also be one of the regions were you can still find other rarer snake species than the usual three. But even then... The dice snake (Würfelnatter) is also semi-aquatic, but non-venomous. And the only other venomous species, next to the adder, you could find in Germany (Aspisviper - Vipera aspis) isn't usually in the water either.
Great story. 👍
I've had eel, but want to try Lamprey some time.
Different eels apparently have different toxicity. Here in southeast Asia, common eels aren't toxic at all. But species like Japanese eels (Unagi) are.
in Belgium we have a dish called "paling in't groen", which is eels in a herb sauce. Used to be very popular (we even have eel festivals, public gatherings where we eat this dish), but due to overfishing it's declined massively in the last 15 years 😕
Paling in het groen . Eel in the green. Here in belgium is a normal dish
The main herb used is called "chervil" in English, or "kervel" in Dutch/Flemish, if I'm not mistaken.
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To add: During lean years in the spring time it was not uncommon for people to spend 90% of their income on food, and the food they get is all preserves. So people eating cheap food or fasting during lent was sometimes involuntary and sometimes to save money for their families.
Well Lent falls in the hungry time, for an agricultural community. That's when the dried and preserved foods are running low, and the new crops aren't yet ready.
The prohibition on eggs and milk and such was also to ensure that the animals could rear their own young, allowing them to be born & fed. (Chicks and ducklings and goslings, calfs getting their milk instead of the farmers, etc.) This literally ensured the farm would have plenty of animals around for eating much later in the year. Pairing it with a religiously significant observance embedded the habit into the highly agrarian cultures of the day, preventing people from gorging themselves *now* only to find themselves starving *later.*
Fun fact, Eels can become very old.
In Sweden an exceptionally old Eel called The Brantevik Eel had lived in a well for 155 years.
You see, in Sweden (and probably other parts of the world too) people would put live eels in wells to keep the water clean from bugs, algae and other creatures because the eel would eat them.
I think it's because they can't mature by going to the sea so they stay juvenile. Eels have 3 life stages. The last stage they lose their entire digestive tract and swim in the sea for 150+ days from Europe to spawn near america
I was thinking eels too.
But did they make sure the eels got out to use the bathroom?
@@peterclarke7006 The residency in the well was pretty permanent
@@sevenproxies4255 😂👍
Seriously, though, it's a joke from one of Terry Pratchett's books (and he was a man who was an absolute sponge for historical facts), that wells in England would have newts in them for the same purpose as eels in Sweden-they keep the water clean of bacteria and algae, and if they're alive, then the water is probably safe.
But he had a little laugh with the idea that the buggers are still pooing in the water.
I remember my history teacher made a booklet on every monarch since William the Conqueror and described Henry I’s death as being due to “a surfeit of lampreys” - we were all 11ish at the time and had no idea what that meant but it was so weird I googled it and always remember it!
When I was eleven, we had to go to the library, search index cards and hopefully found the appropriate book. Go Google😊😊
Thats so good! It myst have taken some time to sum up every monarch like that, i wish we’d gotten the same
... or, as revealed by W C Sellar & R J Yeatman in "1066 and all That": Henry I died "by eating a surfeit of palfreys", which "was a Bad Thing"!
@@DavidLee-qe3rd indeed. The forerunner to Horrible Histories. I wonder how many people remember more than two dates now (due to HH humour). 😅
I must admit, I thought this was going to be about lampreys!
BBQ'ed eel with a sweetened & thickened soya sauce (Unagi Sauce) is a staple of Japanese style sushi restaurants here in Canada. Canadian eel is actually very tasty, though the small bones can be annoying some times. Eel sushi is in fact my favorite item to order at sushi places! But I've purchased smoked eel at the local farmers market a few times.
I do like Japanese eel. It is cooked for the sushi, unlike most sushi fish, and is really delicious. They also have a main dish which is cooked unagi on a bed of rice. Both are served with the sauce you mention. The sushi version would be safer to try for people not used to the flavor. The main dish version tends to be fairly highly priced, though not out of sight.
I adore unagi. It is my favorite sushi by far. I can imagine over-eating it!
Are you sure it was 75,000 adult eels or a bad translation of ‘elvers’ which are baby eels. After making their journey from the Sargasso Sea, they swim upstream by the millions. Any structure impeding their way - like say a watermill or weir - has them climbing up the structure so thickly that one can scoop up handfuls of dozens of elvers at a time (as I did as a small boy).
No longer they are redlisted and more endangered than Pandas.
Eels are not too popular here in the US but luckily I can manage to catch a few in the Delaware River. Lightly brined and smoked over beech wood they are the best, especially with a bit of creamed horseradish!
A surfeit of lampreys! These details really bring the period to life. Love your enthusiasm too. Great work, as always.
I ate smoked eal quite often back before they got endangerad (traditional swedish delicasy). As long as the eal was of decent size, you can just break of long pieces of filets. I wouldn't say it has any wierd taste, no more different than compared to any other two fishes. It is very, very fatty, though.
Japan, the Koreas and other places in Asia serve eel. Grilled eel is a kind of sushi.
I ate eel once in a pub or restaurant somewhere near Cutty Sark when visiting London. I like to try different food abroad and it was said to be traditional food so I had to try it. Eel was served in a sauce so it affected the flavour but I remember it tasting quite similar to other fish. However it did have lots of bones and you had to be careful while eating. The meal also had some kind of small pie and smashed potatoes. Overall it was a very good and fulfilling meal, would gladly eat it again. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the restaurant (Edit. it was Goddards).
I never knew eels were so important in medieval times so this was very interesting video!
That's pie and mash with liquor, a form of parsley sauce, eels are also
sometimes served with it. There's only two eel and pie shops left in London.
Please don't eat eels. The european eel is critically endangered and heading towards extinction (down 98% since the 1980s). They are still sold because fishing lobbies are stronger than people willing to fight for the humble eel. Eels have a complicated life cycle and have never been bred in captivity. Eel fisheries operate by capturing and raising wild baby eels. Once the wild population is gone there will be no more european eels. American and Japanese eels are also endangered. If you wouldn't eat rhino, don't eat eel.
@@nigden1 Actually there are still dozens of "Pie and Mash" shops (incorporating Eels). They are mainly in East and South East London, but there are several further afield...but all within touching distance of London. I eat this once a week but not often Eels...although I DO love them :):)
@@michaellovell1368 Oh, right, I'm not from London, but saw it somewhere that there were only two, so thanks for that. I'm glad though, I've had pie mash and eels and love it.
@@nigden1I understood the liquor was made from the liquid that had been used to boil the eels. Nowadays I think it's plain parsley sauce, but I am sure there must be places in London that sell pie and mash, and also eels, who still use the eel stock to make liquor.
pickled lamprey? The catching and eating a stew of eels by Puddleglum in 'The Silver Chair' (by CS Lewis,) when he first meets Jill and Eustace who go off on the quest to find the lost prince is one of the treasures of the series to me. And it looks like I will not be trying eel anytime soon as the first I have just found in an online supermarket are Japanese eels at a staggering £100 per kilo...
Look at an Asian grocery and you should be able to find roast eel in tins for about the same price as sardines
In the Netherlands smoked eels are still a commonly eaten delicacy. Fishing is now highly regulated as they are highly endangered, making the eels very expensive.
Ah.. another breath of fresh air episode from one of the best channels in youtube
Thanks
It's awesome to see a RUclipsr who is so authentic and doesn't want to mislead his viewers. I really appreciate your content man. It's real and honest. And also solid.
Solidarity brother
🤜🤝🤛
I can remember a long time ago when I was still a kid, I ordered eel in a restaurant in Bavaria because it sounded interesting. It was one of the only foods in my life that I couldn't eat more than one bite of. It tasted like brackish water from a moldy cellar. But as far as I can remember, it wasn't smoked but cooked.
I can imagine that drying and smoking an eel would make it significantly better, with the smoke flavor covering that weird taste of moldy mud.
I agree I didn't like eel either.
I'm not certain, but I think this applies to all fish. With carp, I'm definately sure, it tastes different depending on how it lived. My husband fishes carp from lake Balaton, that's a huge environment for them, and the meat on them is thus less greasy and has just a mild fish taste (great when smoked). Compare that with a carp that was bread in a breeding lake and kept in a tank, yuck! You can taste the mud in their flesh, because they literally swim in muddy waters since they have no space and the water around them can never settle. I would suspect the same applies to any fish really, but it would especially happen to rare and protected breeds, since capturing them on a large scale in the wild comes out to be too expensive and low yield for business. So they breed them in ponds.
I had smoked eel only once and it was a long time ago. I remember it as pleasant tasting. I also eat smoked mackerel on a regular basis, though, so apparently I like fairly 'strong' tasting fish.
It's not enough of a delicacy, to justify it's price though, imo. It's something, I would sure eat, if I had easy and cheap access to it...but not worth spending serious money on.
@@metaltsigga We have this traditional delicacy in the town where I live and it's some rather small little fish from the river (I guess it used to be the poor man's fish). They only ever serve it smoked and grilled - I think this is also because these little river fish don't taste so good when they are cooked.
You pansy ha ha in Australia we love eating eel its great food
,Irish,scots,German settlers all eat smoked eel or fried eel
You couldn't stomach eel ha ha THATS funny ha ha
I've never had eels in the styles you've described but the Japanese styles of eel, unagi don and unagi nigiri, are some of my favorite dishes. It's a smoked or grilled eel served with rice and often some pickled vegetables. I think they're delicious.
Grilled Unagi roll, hell YES!
Staph . . . You making me hungry already
Eels and lampreys are still a very much appreciated traditional and national dish here, in Portugal.
Around 1983, I attended a wedding in East London at which a huge bowl of jellied eels featured at the reception. I have a vivid memory of an older gentleman eating a huge forkful of them. Thanks for reminding me.
Eels are commonly eaten in Japan in sushi. They're actually really tasty and not weird tasting at all. They taste just like a nice light fish.
Jellied Eel was quite popular in England.
Very common in Japan but more so not in sushi. Hitsumabushi, Unagi, Anago, etc… all very delicious though!
Smoked eel is a Dutch classic.
Yeah, I find the flavor similar to trout, and enjoy an occasional tin of roasted eel in Chinese black bean sauce 😋
@@Rocker3829 I should say, I always ate them in sushi restaurants. Often they were seared cooked
Love that countryside view, with the veteran tree in the background.
I believe that the term for a hundred eels was "a hovercraft full of eels" ;)
Eel is and was very common in Scania (eastern denmark/southern sweden) before the overfishing, smoked eel was even on the christmas table. So i have eaten smoked eel many times, i love it, it is a very tasty fish. A good substitute is actually horned pike.
Popular in Portugal until today. There's even a Festival dedicated to eel gastronomy.
My grandmother was a rather creative cook. She always said growing up in the depression helped. Any what, she used to make an Eel Pie. I might have been the only kid brave enough to try it, but it was pretty amazing actually.
Eels, along with other fish, were put in the category of vegetable during times and places of the Middle Ages. This made fish eatable during lent and other fasts.
When I was a kid and we learned about vegetarians, we were told they can eat fish and poultry, so I think that idea stuck around at least until the 20th century.
@@YamiKisara Sure. I am a vegetarian, and have been for years. I follow a diet described as vegan, though I am not (vegan is a lifestyle avoiding as far as possible, any products that bring harm to animals. I wear leather shoes.)
But there is a tradition of assuming vegetarians are "vegan light" if you will. And that eggs, dairy, and fish are allowed. Typically called ovo-lacto-vegetarians, and/or pescatarians, the main exclusion is the flesh of mammals.
I agree that some part of this categorization was born centuries before in these religious practices.
and beaver
@@whiderboss That's right! I forgot about beaver being a fish back then.
And duck as well!
That was fascinating, and I ,loved the nature shots. When I lived in rural Malaysia if you drove over a bridge there were often people at each end selling live eels in plastic bags - a relatively easy way of making some money if you’re not well off. I never tried them but my Malaysian friends loved them.
here in germany smoked eel is cosidered quite the delicacy. i certainly like it very much
Eels are one of the driving forces of the British Empire. Eating that every day growing up would have driven many abroad to seek their fortune, and avoid eating eels.
Eels are great, either stewed or jellied
That’s fascinating! How eels could be so important to all facets of a countries past. And how they could have been so plentiful as to be sold in those quantities.
I’m in the US and eels aren’t popular here either, so like you, I’ve never had them. I can’t imagine I would like them from your description. Lol! ❤️🤗🐝
They used to be popular during the colonial times. In fact, so much that it led to areas fully being cleared of their populations. On some rivers you can still see the structures build to corral them into traps.
@@PlvsVltra-ji3rs That makes sense because so many of the early settlers were English, I’m sure they brought their tastes with them.🤗❤️🐝
I'm also from the United States, and the only time I've eaten eel was when I went out one night with a large group of people my ex-husband went to high school with to eat sushi at a very high end restaurant in Santa Barbara, California where a number of the people I was with knew someone that worked there, and were able to get a large amount removed from the final bill. I drank a lot of Sake that night, so while I remember that we supposedly ate eel, I can't remember anything about it's taste, texture, and so on.
@@laurenmclain6378 eel in sushi is pretty good and inoffensive. It tends to be thin and cooked over a kind of fire. It's also paired with things that work together. Maybe dried eel wouldn't be so bad.
@@laurenmclain6378 Yep, with enough sake, I might try them too lol. ❤️🤗🐝
The area where I'm from in the Netherlands was traditionally famous for its eal catching and smoking. It was a coast town of the Zuiderzee, and that 'sea' was known for its eals, and it was easy to fish on, as it wasn't open sea. Eal fishing kind of stopped when the sea was dammed in and became a lake last century. But when I was little, and we went to that particular town for the town fair, you could still get smoked eal on the streets. I've seen it being smoked on the streets. I haven't eaten eal there, as I didn't like it as a child, but later on I had some. It was quite common to get eal on a bun as street food. I loved the smoked taste. I don't particularly remember the texture so I don't think it was anything weird.
Now in the past decades eal has become so scarce and so expensive that there really is no eal smoking tradition going on anymore. It really is a delicacy now. But still you can see the mobile fish stalls leaving the town every morning, to sell (all kinds of) fish on markets around the country.
So interesting that this all came from medieval eal fishing, and that the imported eal in England probably also came from my area.
The breading of eels is pretty much still a mystery to this day.
No one has ever found a male eel!
Even the Romans wondered -- ruclips.net/video/BTb-lyVtLtU/видео.html
Breading? with breadcrumbs?
Ha! Opps.
Sainsburys sell jellied eels, remove the jelly put red pepper and vinegar on them, you could use black pepper but red is traditional, don't put the chunks in your mouth whole, pick them up and remove the meat from the backbone with your teeth, they're normally served with a large chunk of crusty bread.
@@OutOfNamesToChoose 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
In a Japanese restaurant you may find unagi, which is freshwater eel. Usually grilled with a sweet savory sauce. Served over rice, it’s as an unagi don.
Eel is delicious. I've only had it with Japanese cuisine but I'd like to try the more traditional British recipes. It's an almost sweet meat.
Stay well away from traditional english eel dishes 😅 go for modern recipes. The old stuff is quite grim 😂 google jellied eels
In the part of Italy where I live eel is still quite popular. Nothing fancy or weird here though, we usually have it grilled, which I prefer because it is simple and the meat is flavourful and fatty already.
I haven’t seen any new videos of yours in my RUclips feed for quite a while. So it was a nice surprise to find this new one. I have enjoyed your channel for years. And I always look forward to finding new videos from you.
I've had eels a few times. Couldn't get on with jellied - the texture is too mushy and the jelly makes them feel slimy - loved them smoked but my favourite was filleted and deep fried in breadcrumb. The texture is meaty and the flavour like an oily fish - mackerel or pichards, or maybe shark. I suspect the person who told you it was tough had it overcooked as it only needs very light cooking, just a quick flash then rest to let the heat work its way through. The bones can be a problem if you're not happy picking them out as you eat but once you get the hang of the anatomy it's not a difficult fish to fillet so try that.
I'm Dutch and eels are still popular in my family. My great grandfather and many of his forefathers were fisherman in the Zuiderzee fishing for eels until the whole sea was dammed in and Flevoland was created.
Good smoked eel is very tasty, albeit very fatty, and basically falls right off the bones. Very expensive nowadays however.
Imagine being kicked out of your real estate usage because you could not produce a pair of red trousers in a timely manner. 😂
In Valencia (Spain) we have a traditional dish called All i pebre, where the gelatinous skin of the eels are use to thicken the garlic and paprika sauce. There’s also a very good book called Cañas y barro (Reeds and mud) that tells the tragic story of a fishermen family in an Island in Valencia that their main income resource is the fishing of eels, and the entire society of the island is somehow based on them. Nice and video as always and recommended reading.
I've tried jellied eels and roasted eels in a can from an Asian supermarket. The jellied eels were one of the most unappetizing foods I've ever seen but they were not as bad as I expected them to be. The canned eels were much better just as I'd expected but It will probably be a while before I eat either dish again.
Surely there must be a specific reason why jellied eels are boiled and not fried or roasted? They would taste and look much better.
I think the purpose of the jelly is to keep the air out and increase the shelf life.
You stated that the eels were purchased at an Asian shop?
Maybe different cultures prepare them in different ways?
I don't know personally, just a thought eels might taste different from another country in the way they are processed.
When I was a child in the 60s fishmongers sometimes sold live eels and I remember visiting my grandfather and seeing some in his kitchen. There was always a van selling jellied eels at Hampton Court fair. My dad, aunts and uncles always had some. I tried one. Once.
I had beautifully prepared eels at a fine Italian restaurant in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. We went specifically for eels at the request of an elderly immigrant grandmother. Delicious! Flaky. Not chewy.
I have never had eels, but my husband grew up in The Netherlands, and they had smoked eels. A vendor would come around with a box full of eels, attached to a bicycle. They were live, and he would buy them for his mother to cook.
As a young lad I used to go out on certain nights - moon state was important - with the local not-quite-legal hunting chap to catch eels on the Exe. He'd catch then on a long ash pole with a large worm on the end - the worm haveing been force-fed (with a darning needle) a thick piece of worsted thread. When they bit he would flcik them over his shoulder and 8 times out of 10 drop them straight into a large bucket. When the missed, I'd catch them and chuck them in. Very slimy!
In belgium, near the scheldt, there is a dish called 'paling in't groen' which means eel in green, which is a stew of eel with a variety of local herbs. Its really good
It makes sense for food to be used as rent. Often lords had to feed their household and warriors. Food back then was way more expensive than today
Always a joy to watch your videos, sir. My favorites thus far are about what the different classes would have eaten. Would you, perhaps, know anything about a typical meal during Lenten or other fast days? I would also be very interested to hear your thoughts about the conducting of an average feast, holiday and otherwise. Thanks very much, sir, for your time and effort. Keep up the good work. 😁👍
Im from New Zealand and Grew up in an Eeling family as in my Grandad and Great uncle and my Uncle and soemtimes Mum and Dad would catch fresh water eels for a living i love eel so much we mostly eat it smoked it is great
The eels in eastern Australia go all the way to Fiji and back during their mating season.
I'm relatively confident that freshwater Eels spawn at sea and then migrate here when still young and then leave for the sea as adults to spawn rather than spawning in estuaries.
No. Freshwater fish cannot survive in saltwater and saltwater fish cannot survive in freshwater. Millions of years of evolution can't be changed on a whim or thought.
Salmon
@@JulianaBlewett I am afraid that you are very much wrong in that respect. Putting aside eels for the moment it is a well known fact that fish like salmon spend most of their lives in the ocean, only coming back to fresh water to spawn. Eels are often like this and many in fact move half way across the globe to spawn, after which they die.
@@JulianaBlewett I might suggest you have a look at the wikipedia entry for Anguillidae, the order of fish to which the freshwater eels belong.
The chain, as a unit of measurement is still used today in at least in wildland fire fighting. As in "you want to mop up at least one chain off the dozer line." I think it's sixty eight feet long, but I'm sure I'm wrong. It was more common to use it in the nineteenth century than in the modern era.
Black Birds 4 and 20 of them.
Eating blackbirds or rather hunting blackbirds in Corsica is illegal because so many were eaten that too many were killed.
My late father used to eat Eels. At our local market, in the East End, there was a Pie and Mash shop, i remember as a small child, aged around 6/7 years old, outside the shop they had a stall with 3 big metel trays where live Eels were kept. You could choose which Eel you wanted, and the man used to chop it up in front of you, put the chopped up Eel in a big cup with jelly. I don't think you would get away with that today. I used to think as a child how horrible it was. The block, he chopped them on was all bloody. This was in the 70s, i never liked watching it. Thank god, this practice has long since gone.
in my country, salmon was the food of the peasants and widely available in rivers and lakes. Industrialization, with Dams disrupted their migration and spawning, then overfishing depleted the populations in the lakes and the sea. These days catching wild salmon is outlawed so people eat the farmed Norwegian soy fed variety. Lampreys are a seasonal delicacy but most people don't seem to like them ;the meat has a very strong flavor.
Smoked eel used to be a mainstay of holiday food where I live in southern Sweden. But due to overfishing and regulations it's so horribly expensive nowadays that you're lucky if you can get any for christmas. I personally love the taste.
Eels are one of my favorite food on sushi for example or just smoked, grilled or fried. But beware of the smoked kind they are so oily that they give me uncontrollable digestive issues if I eat more then a few bites
All the many times I’ve stuffed myself on eels, I didn’t realize I should’ve been feeling sanctified.
I have eaten eels with old fishermen from Lough Neagh. They were cooked in a pan with a little butter and finished by having a good quantity of poteen or white vinegar as they called it added at the end. It was a rubbery flesh and oily.
I guessed lampreys. Not too far adrift. I love the gusto with which you approach the topic.😊
Hi, country guy here. Eels are now very rare in the UK. I fished for many years and from catching 5 to 10 eels in a session I would catch one maybe every 4 sessions. I always returned them. In 70 years I only saw 1 lamprey.
I love this stuff! For some reason the history of how the average person lived is my absolute favorite.
My grandmother used to fry eels, that myself and my grandfather caught in the local rivers. As I remember, they tasted quite nice
Could red meat have been seen as "lusty" because people were anemic? Loss of libido is a symptom of anemia. What other foods would have added iron to medieval peasant diets?
Eggs, seafood, saltwater fish, spinach, peas (which they ate a lot of), kale, wild edibles (which, again, they would've eaten quite a lot of), whole wheat and rye bread (their old varieties would be much richer in minerals than modern ones), strawberries (those tiny forest ones are native to Europe), raisins, figs, dates, dried fruit such as apricots and plums, lentils, nuts, ... there's really not much reason to believe medieval peasants were anemic.
I assume the wealthier ones would also leave their stews simmering for hours in iron pots
One of my uncles was a fisher and as a kid, whenever we had a grown up family birthday or get together, we had fried eel. The rule was, fill up your plate and you're not done eating until the bones could reach around the entire outer rim of your plate. I'm from Denmark. My parents used to say it was poor mans food in old days. When I was a kid, some saw it as trashy food. We however always liked it in our family. Today it is expensive to get if you go eat out. Funny how it differs through time.
Thank you for your work!
I remember having eels as a kid, freshly caught from the sea (I believe they’re prohibited to catch now as endangered). They used to freak me out as the filleted and segmented parts would batter themselves as the nerves in them twitched. They were delicious though!
I would love to see a video on the medieval catching, drying, smoking, cooking, and eating of eels.
I live in Western Australia, where we have about fifteen species of saltwater and freshwater eels. The most extreme is the moray eel, which is a saltwater species and quite aggressive, yet still very fast id you can land one. The rest are stream, lake and river borne, easy to catch and delicious. Unadon is a very popular Japanese dish here. We had some person got badly mauled by a moray eel at Cottesloe Beach a while back. Interesting, in that particular beach also hosted a few fatal shark attacks in recent times.
They actually, to my understanding, spawn in the sea and make their way all the way upriver before getting bigger! They start as glass eels, which are tiny and see-through, so I can see why people would think they spawned in the river. It actually makes me sad to hear they were eaten so frequently, seeing that they can live for up to 80 years! Also EVERY EEL in the world spawns in the same place -- the sargaussian sea, which is a sea...in the ocean. Learned all that from The Book of Eels; highly recommend. I just hope my ancestors had respect for the creatures they were eating, like Salish folks respect salmon.
I have eaten eel several in various countries:
When I went to Valencia I went to the inland salt lake the Albufera which has a local cuisine where eels are used as they are trapped (using traps similar to the medieval eel bucks). There is a dish called "all i pebre" (garlic and pepper) which is a mix of eels with potato in a sauce made from, obviously, garlic and pepper.
In Japan it is common to see eel (unagi) on sushi (on nigris), mixed with rice as unadon often served with teriyaki sauce.
I also went to one of the last surviving East End cafeterias that sell jellied eels and had jellied eels there, from memory they also sold them in a flavoured stew as well.
Personally I find them delicious but I think, perhaps, it depends a great deal on how well they are cooked and also the extent to which you like the taste of fish. They have a very strong piscine flavour - like concentrated trout - that is probably not to everyone's taste, but certainly any lover of seafood should try them.
lampreys were still a treat in the medieval village my late mother grew up in..she left at age 22 in 1964 for Australia.
Lamprey, Henry Tudor loved them.
Happily beat to post this 🙌
Not Henry Tudor, Henry I some 400 years earlier, unless perhaps Henry Tudor loved them too
@tomrowell1558 Good to know, I only remembered the food item and a "Henry" attached 😬
Sure enough the I opposed to the VII 👍
can you make an episode of cooking foods in medieval style we wanted to see how foods during that period looks like and maybe taste
I'm from the Netherlands and here smoked eels are still considered a delicacy. I personally love it, although it's quite expensive and I usually only have it at my grandfather's birthday. But you can buy it on buns to go as well.
People have no idea how big eels can get, even in the canals in the UK they can be over a meter long.
Unagi, or eel is a Japanese sushi. It's most often served in a sweetened soy glaze, and it's absolutely delicious, if somewhat of an acquired texture/taste. My ex worked selling eel as a boy at the Fultion fish market in NY, and at the time (early 50s?) it seems that eel was a very popular fish. He described killing the live eels by throwing them in a water filled box, and turning on the switch to electrocute them. They are also notoriously hard to skin. They would have to nail the head to a board and then peel the skin off with pliers (?) until the skins were inside out.
My family is mostly from the East End of London and my Nan used to *love* Jellied Eels, they were a treat for her and she'd always be happy to get some. To me they looked horrible, like some kind of weird mush in a cup but she loved 'em.
Ever since watching "A knight's tale", I've wondered what Creamed eel-pie actually taste like. It sounds kind of nice, yet kind of disgusting at the same time
In the Netherlands, where I'm from, it's not a super strange food to eat. I think it may have lost popularity over the past 40 or 50 years but I think many people will have had them at their grandparents.
Still though walking by rivers you can occasionally see traps.
Unagi nigiri are a pretty common form of sushi at least where I live. Traditionally the eel is a small fillet and it’s barbecued or smoked skin on. They’re quite fantastic, crispy on one side and tender on the other, usually served with a sauce drizzled on top that gives them a smoky flavour. They have a bit of a chew, but they’re far from a poor tasting fish or even what I’d consider an acquired taste. Something like northern pike are far more in that realm in my opinion.
Maybe it all comes down to how it’s prepared?
I thought sugar was a king killer. Lots of diabetic monarchs back then i suspect. 😅
Modern sugar only really became popular and widespread in the 1700s and onwards, thats where the obese king image came from.
I can remember my mum cooking some freshly caught eels back in the 60s; the thing I still remember all these years later years later is them wriggling about in the pan like they were still alive! (They were definitely dead as they didn't have heads.) I was very young and I can't remember if I was brave enough to eat them after seeing that, but I did have jellied eels some years later - they tasted pretty good.
Great video as always. I've eaten eels from a tin from an Oriental supermarket & also as part of a bento box at a Japanese restaurant. In Japan there is a special sauce just for eels - unagi no tare. Delicious!! Nice texture to the "meat".
Ok, I knew this one from the video title. Fairport Convention had a ‘Surfeit of Lamprey’ track on their 1995 album “Jewel in the Crown”, so I had to research it back then.
I've tried eels a few times, I'm Portuguese and they are considered a delicacy over here, they come preserved in these tiny barrels and are very expensive. Can't say I really cared for them the textures is very strange, very slimy, but loads of people love them. Maybe a leftover from medieval times?
No bones in eels. Just one thin spine from head to tail. No waste, pure flesh. Smoked, or cooked (dont know the exact word) and finished with a butter sauce.... I think it;s the most delicious meal. Thank you for this lovely historie lesson. I'm from the Netherlands where we also eat them though there is talk of forbidding it.
Unagi donburi (eel over rice) is a classic and very popular Japanese dish. Not just in Japan. It's available in any sushi restaurant in New York (and I assume everywhere else, as it freezes well), and I eat it regularly. The texture is very soft, and there are no noticeable bones. It is served with a soy based sauce. The Japanese associate eels with energy and endurance and like to eat them in summer to counter the enervating heat. I think they may have been popular because they can be transported packed in moist straw, and can live for a couple of days out of water as long as their skins are kept moist.
"My hovercraft is full of eels." MPFC
I love watching jasons channel.
Always interesting and informative, never a dull moment 👍 ♥️.
Glad you enjoy it!
@@ModernKnight 🥰
Got to eat quite a bit of eel while stationed in Japan. It was one of the favorite things I ate over there. Grilled eel and Unagi rolls were always delicious.
I love history of the mundane! It adds such texture to what life would have been like for the "rest of us".
Eels (both freshwater and salt-water species) are still eaten regularly in Asia. Go to any Japanese restaurant and they will usually have Anago (salt-water) and Unagi (freshwater) sushi. A little less common outside of Asia, but possible to get is Liangxi (or Wuxi) which is crispy fried eels.
Near Newport, Essex there used to be archeological digs every year. There were thousands of oyster shells everywhere. It was quite a long way from the coast, and oysters don't have a long shelf life, so it's a mystery to me how they were so popular. They probably ate eels too, but there's no evidence for that.
Look into skirret. It's a plant that was widely eaten during the medieval and previous periods that went out of favour when potatoes came over from the Americas. I'm currently trying to grow some...
My Dad use to catch eels in this freshwater lake in Victoria Australia. He loved them, I tried it once and thought it wasn't much good at all.
One thing that we understand, but often assume people in earlier periods didn't understand, is fungibility. Eels were fungible, as most commodities are. If one owes a thousand eels in rent, there is absolutely no reason one couldn't negotiate to deliver a thousand eels worth of wine or salt cod or cloth. The contract would continue to specify eels, but it seems to me (who has some familiarity with the study of money) that payment is likely to have been made in eel units, but not necessarily in actual eels.
Grew up in Japan. I love eel. But never ate it until I was an adult as my aunt was allergic.
I've been to Ely, England, but I don't remember seeing eels on the menus there.
Hi Jason! First of all nice video! As always. I'm from Saxony Germany and there you can buy smoked eel at some places. I find it quite tasty in this form.😋
I lived in Japan and ate eels.( called UNAGI) Never thought I would but they are served with rice and are also a delicacy there ,due to the storage of them and the fact that many steams are polluted. They are cooked with a sauce similar with teriyaki Sause( sweet) the bones are removed , then grilled and served atop of a bed of rice.
Smoked and baked eel is pretty common here. It tastes lovely and I think it's not a tough food to like when it's prepared right. I find it pretty meaty and tasteful.