We don’t need any more heat on us. We don’t need more heat. He’s a witch. I’m not a witch. He’s a man witch. Dabbled in a bit of wicca. To understand the food of our present, we must first understand the food of our past. That’s why we’re recreating some of the most notable meals throughout history. And today we’re getting absolutely witchy with it. Ooh. Are we gonna play light as a feather stiff as a board with Neve Campbell? No, I’m a big Fairuza Balk guy. We are recreating food from the Salem Witch trials. It’s time for… Meals of History! Emily, we’re going back to truly one of the darkest, weirdest times in history that is actually still somewhat unexplained to this day. What exactly caused the mass hysteria? Yeah. We’re talking 1692 Salem, Massachusetts. This is in the Massachusetts Bay. You had a pretty small insular puritan town that had grown bigger and bigger. People had gotten to know their neighbors a little bit more and decided that they would start outing them as witches supposedly. So it all started with two nine year old girls who went into convulsions. And then nobody knows to this day what caused the convulsions, but there’s a large prevailing theory that it was tainted rye bread. So we definitely gotta make some rye bread. They think it was tainted with Ergotism, which is a form of bacteria that has psychotropic properties. But it is a bit unproven. But I don’t know. I like to believe in that. I pretty much specifically just drink rye whiskey. Same. That explains why we’re not exactly… I think I’m definitely bewitched. What’s crazy is, these two nine year old girls start convulsing, they bring in a doctor and he just goes like, seems like a bewitchment to me. And that is the spark that conflagrated the entire Salem witch trials, 25 women dead, beheaded, hanged, really messed up. And in the backdrop of all this is you are living an incredibly hard colonial life. Yeah. With puritanical, crazy theocratic rule. And so food was often scarce, hard to come by, but there were things that they made work, including rye bread. Bonnets. And bonnets. A lot of bonnets. So we’re gonna get into it. We’re gonna try and eat some of the foods that they would’ve been eating during the Salem witch trials. Not like as a spectator thing, just as like a way to show the history that would’ve been… I kinda would think that they probably have a snack while they’re watching. Maybe. Tossing back popcorn. Yeah. Yeah. Just like some oral fixation to deal with the anxiety. That makes sense. Annalise, did you get me a bonnet? Yeah. You gonna go put on that bonnet and talk about a real depressing time in history? I’m gonna bonnet so hard. Bonnet hard, bro. Ooh, shoot. That was embarrassing. She’s a witch! Hello. Sir. I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to men. Yeah, listen, I know that was a product of the times, 1690s, but me, I’m kind of like a modern person who like, you know, our show passes the Bechdel. Don’t say you’re modern here. No, no, no. Not to. I know, I know they’re watching. But I’m saying you can like, be cool with me. I’m not gonna out you. I’m not gonna… Who are you? My name’s Josh. I’m a cook. I’m trying to make some bread. Oh, you’re just cooking? I’m just cooking. Yeah. Cooking’s a great place to gossip. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I gotta ask, I guess, are you, do you identify as a witch? Sorry, jeez, Christ. No, don’t say that out loud. Then they’ll go, they hear it. It’s like the word right now. Everybody hears that word and then they’re like uh. Anyway. No, I was accused, but then I got, I got out of there. You just escaped? You made a run for it? No, no, no. I just, I did a few things. Listen, we all did. Just a few favors. Do you know about this tainted rye situation? Oh boy. Like have you been having any fits lately? Any sort of like, are you barking like a dog or convulsing? I love the tainted rye. They think because you wanna like get a little on the rye, that you’re a witch. But I think the real thing that they think, because I go out with my girlfriend. Yeah. My friends. It’s like a Friday night thing. I feel that. So we get the rye and then we go out to the woods and we get naked because it’s the only place we don’t get judged for our bodies. That’s why we’re naked out there. Not because we’re worshiping the devil, it’s just, you know, I wanna feel good. The rye thing. It’s not necessarily like verified by history and there’s a lot of things that don’t add up. Like if the thing was poisoned then more men would’ve like, you know, acted crazy. But maybe the guys just got away with a lot of things. They can do whatever. Right? They don’t like to have fun like us. That’s fair. All right, so let’s start with this bread. So this is what’s called thirded bread. So this means that is one third rye flour, one third wheat flour, one third what they anachronistically called Indian flour. You said three, three times. And then if you double three, it’s a six. Don’t double three to six. No, we don’t need any more heat on us. We don’t need more heat. He’s a witch. I’m not a witch. He’s a man witch. Dabbled in a bit of wicca, but I read, I do some tarot readings. I just put that together. So we’re adding corn meal in there. So this is basically, because like I mentioned, times were tough for y’all. Like growing food is incredibly difficult. It took a long time to be able to cultivate wheat in a new soil environment that people weren’t used to. So rye was a little bit easier to cultivate. And then corn is native to the Americas, so they would cut the bread with that. I’m gonna add a little bit of salt to that. I’m the town spinster. So they gave me, I’ve never been married, I don’t really want to be. I’m just adding some yeast and water. And so my job as the spinster is I have to handle the manure. Okay. You have to have that to have fertilization with crops. You do You just gather all the animals. Also as a spinster, you were a target for witch accusations. Yes. That was a big thing. Like the first two women accused of witchcraft. Well two of the first three. The single one. They think that we want all your husbands, we don’t want your husbands. Yeah. And that was, I mean listen, there was a lot- I just wanna get high and go in the woods and be naked. It’s really all I want to do. Who doesn’t man? That’s a universal human want. I also like puppets. I have a little theater troop with my friends. This is real? Is it real thing people did? No, I’m really just winging it. Oh, you’re- Fair. Fair. Fair. I didn’t know man. Sometimes we just go places and we don’t know if it’s gonna work. Like when I tried to explain what forensics was. Yeah. Which I’m so excited I can do that now because clearly I’m doing a forensics bit because of the crucible. So basically it’s a public speaking- Anytime there’s crazy mass hysteria. Right. Crucible is obviously a reference to McCarthyism at the time. Yes. It’s just like there’s crisis going on. People freak the hell out. Look for someone to blame. And so the crisis at this time in the colonies was just like everything. Like there were a ton of wars with indigenous tribes. You had King Phillip’s war going on. You had like a French war with the Native Americans that was bearing down on the colonies. Babies were just dying constantly due to malnutrition. Yeah. Because if one crop failed, they were just screwed. And so literally it was just like, well, let’s panic and freak out. And then of course it tends to be vulnerable. Women who are the ire of that. Just blame women. Yeah. Blame women that are like old. Yeah. It was that. Single. The first person to be blamed as a witch was a slave named Tituba, Oh no. Actually. And so yeah, so they were just, I mean, two little girls. And again, you combine that with just like crazy puritanical ideology. Yeah, that’ll do it. You know, a bunch of weirdo dudes in charge and boom, jails were flooded with hundreds of people accused of witchcraft. You know, as an adult lady with ADHD, You would have been- I would not have had the access to the medication that I’m on currently, which I think that everyone can agree is barely doing the trick. All right. So we have thirded bread, we let it rest. Bread was typically baked in a dutch oven that you’d like cover in coals. You’d put it over a fire. They didn’t have modern ovens back then. So we’re just gonna let it proof right in this Dutch oven. And then, God, this is dense. Am I the only one that laughs every time you hear Dutch oven. Prudence. I’m gonna call you Prudence. It’s actually, yes. I’ll take that. If I argue with the man then it’s pretty bad for me. You’re a witch, then you’re a witch. So we are making cod chowder right now. Cod was a huge, huge industry in the Massachusetts bay colony. And chowder actually dates back to like the 1500s in France. And so it was a big thing that they’d make. It’d feed a lot of people. I don’t know the exact recipe though, but I understand you have a poem about chowder that was actually published in a newspaper. It is. And I brought the spell. I mean… Ugh, don’t. The poem. All right. Okay. You read it to me. I’ll follow you. First, lay some onions. I just realized I’m a woman reading and I don’t- She’s a witch. I might get something for that, but you won’t tell. No, it’s on camera. You don’t know what the heck that is. Okay, all right. First, lay some onions to keep the pork from burning. Because in chowder there can be not turning. This is a banger. Lay some pork. Hold on. Hold on. Wait. I’m still on the onions. I’m still on the onions. Very thin. I’m still on the onions. Stop conjuring. I’m still on the onions. Okay. Okay. Okay. Lay some onions. We’re laying some onions down. It’s gonna prevent the pork from burning. Woo. So now I need to slightly- does it say salt pork? Very thin. All right, I got it. Thus you and chowder always must begin. This is really written witchily. I don’t like this. Next, lay some fish. Cut- Do you want me to wait for a minute? Yeah. Yeah. Wait, just here, let me get the, I swear. One more and you’re going right in the stockade. Okay, good. Next, lay some fish. Cut crossway is very nice. I don’t know what crossways necessarily means, but I’m gonna slice the fish. It’s the thing Jesus died on. Then season well with pepper, salt and spice. Pepper, salt and spice. I like the bones of this recipe. Hello? Hold on, we got some pepper. We got some pepper going in. I’m gonna get some salt. There we go. Okay, what’s next? Parsley. Parsley. Chop in a little bit. Okay, there’s more. Sweet marjoram. Mar-jor-am? MARJORAM! Marjoram. Mar-joram. We got marjoram. We got the parsley. We got the marjoram. Savory and thyme. Savory? Okay. Okay. We’ll get a little savory in there. And they’re underutilized herbs. Savory is fun. I think it’s in Herbes de Provence. I just thought it was an adjective. Biscuit next. Which it must be soaked sometime. Does that mean it’s a witch? No, no, no. It’s if you sink. Oh if you sink you’re a witch. Okay. And then they killed you anyway and then it’s like, oh it’s, it’s like a toofer. It was really never gonna work. All right, we’re gonna soak the biscuits. These will soak in the water in the soup. Thus your foundation laid. You will be able to raise a chowder high as Tower of Babel. Ooh I like that part. For by repeating or the same again. I just turned Irish. What is that? All right, so I’m gonna repeat the process. Make a chowder for a thousand men, there weren’t even a thousand men in Salem. No. Okay. So this is interesting population of Salem, about 1400 at the time. 200 accused. One in seven accused of being a witch. That’s too much. Also like potentially 30% of them. Up to 30% of them were men. Salem has two parts. There’s Salem Village and then Salem like the port. It’s a town. It’s like a port town. All the rich people were in the port town. Ah. And they were almost exclusively the ones accused. By the poor. Really? Because there was a lot of wealth disparity. Interesting. Interesting. So they decided to accuse the wealthy of like why they were having such a hard time. I mean, hey smart. This is a lot of frigging chowder. I’ve got more of this to read. Oh my god. What’s the next, okay, what’s the next step? I’m basically there. Okay. Last, a bottle of Claret. Clar-ee? Clar-ay. Clar-ay. Claret is a, I believe, a British term for a Bordeaux wine. Oh Yeah. Which Puritans probably weren’t drinking a lot of the rich people in like the Port of Salem, you know they were just getting messed. Which I’ve decided that Prudence is from the port. Like I’ve not married, I just am like independently wealthy. Play the character you wanna see in yourself. Yep, that’s true. So this is a red wine, fish, pork and onion chowder. Thickened with biscuits. That definitely were not pilgrim brands. I’m gonna kill this fly. Kill it with your witch powers, Prudence. You were saying something earlier about how in the trials they were like using ghosts as witnesses? Aw man, listen, hold on, we gotta cover this with water. We’re gonna get this chowder cooking. Awesome. We’re about to get into spectral evidence next. With water eno? Like Brian Eno? I think it’s like enough. But you like, with water eno- Eno- Eno- How like, sensual. To smother them, you’ll have a mess. Which some call omnium gatherum. Did you write this? No, this is from an actual newspaper in like 1720. So yeah, we’re fast forwarding a little bit. I like how it all sounds like very like flowery and then it’s like gatherum. Omnium gatherum! It sounds really witchy. Well- Wingardium Leviosa! That’s on there. A lot of kids in my puritanical Christian hometown weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter. They banned it from the public school library. Yeah, I’m from Tennessee. Y’all are real fussy about that. We got this like big old wine, bread and fish slop. Gotta let that cook for I guess like probably 4 to 12 hours. That is interesting that I could read The Crucible growing up. I’m sure that people still read it in school. But you can’t read Harry Potter in the schools. Stop banning books. You weirdos. That’s about literal witch stuff. Hey Prudence, you a big fan of podcasts? I like peas that are in pods. Great answer. Well we have a podcast called A Hot Dog Is A Sandwich. New episode is out now. It’s called Is A Hot Pocket A Dumpling? And this is a very special episode because it’s the first featuring your calls that you called in to 833DOGPOD1 our new hotline. It’s actually really fantastic. Check it out and keep calling that hotline. It’s not a sex line, but me and Nicole make it sound like it is. I have a fun thing about dogs. What’s that? They killed two dogs for being witches. Of course they did. In the Salem witch trials. They also jailed a four year old for a year. All right, real quick, let’s cook. We have beans here. Baked beans were obviously a big thing in Massachusetts. Boston baked beans. Obviously. Boston baked beans. It’s a thing. Oh I didn’t put that together. It’s the capital of Massachusets. I’m more of a Bush’s baked beans because of that golden retriever. Yeah, he’s sexy but- He knows all the secrets. I like the old guy. But Boston baked beans were actually a thing because beans are somewhat popular in England, but came to America. In America the three sister crops are beans, corn, and squash. And so the indigenous people actually taught colonists how to make beans. They would dig what they called a bean hole, fill it with like embers, toss beans in there. And so the colonists would use things like salt pork and molasses to flavor them. So put the beans in this little pot, put the salt pork in it. Get the molasses in there. I’m gonna start cooking red flannel hash. So most of the colonists, the puritans especially, they were from England so they were used to a lot of hella British foods. So they came over with things like you know, a boiled dinner, which was probably like salt beef. We got corned beef right here. What are we boiling this in? Oh my gosh, you’re right. Can you fetch me some water from the well? Thank you. My bad. My bad. I forgot. What? No don’t… You’re gonna out yourself. Oh we don’t know where that broom’s been. You’re gonna get a UTI. I’m back. That is an anachronistic broom. Hang on, I gotta park it. Yeah. Okay, okay. Okay, carrot top. You can chill with the prop comedy. That was a great bit. That was completely improvised and not planned at all. One of the reasons Puritans love baked beans is because it was very- That’s hot. So beans you could make say on a Saturday night and then Sabbath rolls around, you’re not allowed to cook because it’s a sin. You can behead people for no reason. But you can’t cook on a Sunday. God forbid. You still can’t buy liquor on Sundays in a lot of the south. I immediately got southern when I said that. Am I dipping the whole thing in molasses? Yeah, the whole thing in molasses. I mean literally molasses was one of the main flavors of things back then because it was unrefined sugar, it was cheaper and all that. And so they were just dumping that in everything. And so they would’ve leftovers of a boiled dinner and they would turn that into a hash. This is a specific hash that dates back hundreds of years called red flannel hash. And it’s called red flannel hash because it’s got beets in it Beets are big winter crop, which was important because like it was snowy and miserable and they’re all pissed off and that’s why they were outing people as witches because they were just like, ‘Ah, I just wanna be heard’. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So we’re just gonna dice up all of our veg here. Did I do all of that right? Yeah, that looks great, dude. Do I stir it or anything? No man. You just put that in the oven and then it’s just gonna cook. And that’s, I mean, the earliest recipes for baked beans were literally like three ingredients. So I don’t need to stir up the molasses or nothing? You just leave right in the middle? If you want to stir it up. You wanna stir it up with your hands? No. I was really distracted for a moment because I was trying to think of what is molasses? So molasses is literally, you take sugar cane and then you like juice it and boil it down. And so if you were to take molasses and like boil it down until it becomes like a caramel and then you make it hard, you evaporate all the water out of it, then you pulse it and that becomes like sugar. So that becomes like a brown sugar, like a demerara. I immediately regret asking this question. There’s a lot of people who say that like the people who were like, you know, cursed or bewitched or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Like did they really have the rye thing or were they just like faking it and really committing to it? It’s a big question. I have a feeling it could be both. I feel like a lot of things in history, the Salem witch trials started out with like one nugget of truth. Someone either had, I know there’s another theory that it was Encephalitis and it was literally just a brain disease. Ooh. That was like, that caused people to go into fits. I have a feeling it was just that, and then it was like, all right, we’re pissed off. We’re trying to sue people. We’re trying to piss off our neighbors. We’re trying to assert puritanical control. Now let’s start the lying. Yeah. Also, we never talked about spectral evidence. Oh. Okay. So spectral evidence. You- What is that? I didn’t mean to touch my privates. Hang on, I’ll get you something. Do you need a towel? Yeah. Yeah. Get me a towel. All right. So we got this hash going. We’re just gonna let this cook down. Spectral evidence was one of the most common ways to convict people. I mentioned the witches- It’s a lot more cumbersome. There’s that. They did a thing where they float, they tried to make them sink or float and then she’s going around. But spectral evidence was literally just like, yeah, you know, ‘I had a dream that she’s a witch’. And so like- Oh, they’re there. The devil visited me in dreams. Ergo, boom, she’s a witch. And then eventually a governor was like, ‘Hey, no more spectral evidence’. And they were like, ‘well it’s easiest way to convict people. By the way, there’s a ghost in the room right now. Ergo she’s a witch’. That’s how a lot of people were. What’s going on? People were probably hysterical and having like big fits because they were like, ‘Ah. It’s the olden times. I hate it, it sucks’. ‘There’s no Uber. I gotta drive a horse’. Yeah, ‘I don’t have Midol, ugh’. Yeah, it would suck. All my children died. My children are dead. They’re thinking you’re just gonna act normal, all through that time period. It’s just like, life’s hard. Let’s get it. Let’s raise ruckus. Yeah. You know what I mean? Our food is done. We gotta get to eating dinner. Do I put this in something? You never put that in the oven, huh? Well… I don’t know. I thought you put it because that’s how we cook things. Oh. We’re gonna put the beans in the oven and then we’re gonna wait four hours and we’re gonna eat. Okay. Oh, you’re not even gonna let me do it. No. Fine. Tainted witch hands. Oh! Let’s eat. All right, Prudence. You’ve escaped the gallows once, which I’m incredibly happy for. I hope you can do it again. But hey, even if you can’t, we got a beautiful last supper here. Oh yes. Well the trick to surviving if somebody accuses you is just to confess. Did that, did that work? Yes. Most of the time. Like actually though? Yeah. It was mainly people who wouldn’t confess and then they killed them. Including this one man. Everything was hanging except for this one man who was pressed to death between two rocks. Give me your plate, you have some beans. Thank you so much. Have some good old, authentic Boston baked beans. And here have some of that party bread that you love so much. Ooh. It is dense. This is a hefty dense loaf. It smells really nice though. Yeah. Eat your heart out, Cheesecake Factory. Alright, let’s dig into the chowder first. Okay. So this looks horrifying. It’s kind of a grayish purple. But again, we were following an actual recipe that was published in a newspaper, albeit as a weird poem. And there’s a whole bottle of red wine with all the fish. I think it smells pretty good. It smells pretty good. The texture’s a little bit horrifying because of the biscuits that were thickening it. Well stop like- Jiggle. Watch it jiggle. Mmm. There’s a biscuit drunk in here? The purple fish is a little weird. You can kinda see- That’s fish. They were just eating anything back then though. You know what I mean? I can’t tell this is fish or biscuit. I think it’s probably biscuit. Try it. Eat it. All right. If it kinda makes you wanna throw up, because it’s just like gelatinous and squishy, that’s the biscuit. Mmm. No, I love it. You’re in, you’re in. Listen, it’s like a chicken and dumpling situation, which I’ve had on the brain a lot lately. It is. It’s not bad. Like I would eat this whole bowl. I can’t believe that you don’t like this. I don’t know. It seems like totally up your alley. The red wine’s giving me kind of vomit vibes. Don’t say that. Maybe like somebody who’s thrown up a whole bottle of red wine at a tailgate. Go Bruins! Josh. I was having a good time. I like the salt pork. I mean, again, if you’re feeding an army as high as the Tower of Babel. Whatever the poem said, I get why this is a big colonial dish. It’s warming. Yes. Let’s try the beans. Let’s try the beans. Beans! Okay. This is classic Americana. Indigenous techniques. Simple ingredients. Better pizza with Papa Johns. I taste that molasses, real hardcore. A lot of molasses in there, huh? I like this better. Eat some of the salt pork. Okay, yeah, I’ll do that. Salt pork’s too tough. Too tough. Salt pork’s too tough. Hang on, I want it. Come here. Dude. If I were to make like… they got nothing on Bush’s, it got nothing on Bush’s. No. Let’s say that. When Bush’s figured out- Not a sponsor. They were once. Chili magic. Y’all remember chili magic? That was rad. I would make additions to this. But again, times were tough. People were pissed off. That’s why they were accusing women. Not to, not to keep, you know, not to give them an out. But I’m saying, a lot of people were just starving and it was cold. So like, eh. Here we are. But yeah, I think molasses is like very overpowering kind of. Yeah well, if you don’t like molasses, try this brown molasses bread. Yay. Oh my God. It is so- It’s dense. Well because like rye flour doesn’t have the type of like gluten that wheat flour does. So it’s already gonna be denser. The mark of the three beans, she’s a witch! I like this gravy. I like anything that’s got a little bit of wine in it. I’m in on this LSD bread, dude. Yeah. Let’s go to a dead show. Dance in the parking lot. It’s kind of almost cakey. It is. That’s the corn meal. Because cornmeal doesn’t actually like rise. Right. So it doesn’t give you that glutenous chew. It’s gonna keep it dense, but it’s good. I love it. A little morning after breakfast, the red flannel hash looks lovely. I’m gonna scoop some onto the plate with the beans. Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t know how to do this. You went ‘yarr’. What was with that? The witch trials, was that like the beginning of Satanic panic? Mm. No. So Salem witch trials kind of had a legacy in Europe through Western Europe. In like the 1300s, they were doing witch burnings. Yeah. And so like the food cultures imported from Europe, they were like, let’s bring all that stuff over here. We moved here for religious freedom. We’re not gonna edit anything out. We’re just gonna bring it all over. We moved for religious freedom. Let’s burn some people. Oh and also hanging and then pressing one guy between stones, but it was kinda- I know. Very creative. Oh. What’s that? Thank you. I don’t know. Oh. Oh, I have jury duty. Oh, what’s the trial for? You think? Oh it’s witchcraft. It’s witchcraft. I thought it was tax fraud. It’s witchcraft. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I’m gonna, I have to be on a jury. That’s weird. Cause I’ve been on trial. Why would you put me on the jury? I’m gonna be kinda biased. Don’t you think. At this point they just need bodies in there? I have a feeling it’s gonna be a quick decision. Yeah. I don’t know. Oh, it’s Rebecca. Oh. So she won’t be at the woods thing tonight. Yeah. Well if you need an extra body, I’m down. That’s too bad. Well, I better get over there. All right. I love Rebecca. I really hope they don’t kill my friend. Yeah, probably don’t fly to the jury on the broom. Probably leave the broom. Probably leave the broom. It’s a very good point. You leave the broom. Well. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll take her halfway. Yeah. Smart. Sure. Sure. Sure. Then I’ll park it. Ditch it in the woods. Yeah. Just throw in the woods and then I’ll walk the rest of the way. That’s smart, that’s smart. Like, ‘oh my God, I walked so much’. Cause then you can go be naked in the woods and you’ll find the broom and be like, ah. Listen. Naked in the woods with the broom. You gotta try it. Use your imagination. All right. Well. Toodles, I really like talking with you. I do too. I hope I see you again. Yes, I think you will. Well, I don’t feel like we’re gonna accuse each other. No, I certainly would never do that. No, I’m not gonna do it. I would have no reason to accuse you. I agree. You would have no reason to accuse me. Mmm. Why would we do it? All right, I’ll see you later. Okay. Bye. Rebecca! I’m coming! So she’s definitely a witch, right? Like getting naked in the woods. That’s not normal. Bye! Oh, sorry. See ya. See ya. Well, thank you so much for stopping by Mythical Kitchen. Big thanks to Prudence. We’re probably not gonna be seeing her too much soon. Hey, if you’re not subscribed to the channel, subscribe to the channel. And if you are subscribed to the channel, tell a friend about Mythical Kitchen. Send them this video completely out of context. And they’ll be like, ‘what the hell’s wrong with you? 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