The Fantastic History Of Food

Mithridates has claimed his throne, built a reputation for being remarkably difficult to poison, and made himself one of Rome’s most determined enemies. Now the Romans are coming to deal with him.

In the second half of our mad honey story, we follow the Poison King through decades of warfare, meet the mountain tribes who prepared a rather unusual welcome for Rome’s soldiers, and discover how a few bowls of roadside honey became a devastating military trap.

And for Mithridates, a lifetime spent trying to make himself impossible to poison is about to have one final, deeply inconvenient consequence.

This is part two of our story. If you haven’t listened to Mad Honey and the Poison King (Part 1), start there.

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Thank you to the sponsors of this episode The Stephenson Honey Co.

Get 10% off your order at www.stephensonhoney.com when you use offer code FOODHISTORY at checkout.

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After surviving months of fighting, starvation and freezing mountain passes, thousands of Greek soldiers finally stumble across something worth celebrating: an enormous supply of free honey.

And naturally, they start helping themselves, but before long, they're barely able to stand!

In part one of our mad honey story, we discover how bees around the Black Sea produced this strange substance, before meeting Mithridates, a young prince whose father’s murder left him deeply suspicious of everyone around him as well as his own dinner. 

From an army defeated by it's own lunch to the making of the Poison King, this is a story about honey, paranoia and a rather ambitious attempt to become impossible to kill.

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Thank you to the sponsors of this episode The Stephenson Honey Co.

Get 10% off your order at www.stephensonhoney.com when you use offer code FOODHISTORY at checkout.

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You can also support me over on Patreon starting from just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod

There are probably very few people listening to this podcast who don’t already know at least some of the story of the Titanic.

But as with all famous stories like this one, there are always miniature sub plots playing out in the background that don’t become quite as famous, but once you hear them add life and color to the story as a whole.

Today’s story is just one such tale and stars a man name Charles Joughin. He was the ship’s Chief Baker and on the fateful night of April 14, 1912, he found himself less concerned about the quantities of the following mornings sourdough loaves and somewhat more concerned about the water that was rising all around him.

In today's episode we’ll discover just how Charles saved the lives of many on board the ship that night, chief amongst them, his own.

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In Georgian Era London, some of Britain’s most powerful men formed an exclusive dining club devoted almost entirely to eating enormous steaks, drinking heavily and celebrating the virtues of beef.

They took their society so seriously that they even appointed their own bishop and when the Prince of Wales told them that he’d like to join their club, they simply told him they had a strict 24 seat policy, and all 24 seats were already full.

This is the strange story of The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks.

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In the 1880s, Henry Friend claimed he had invented a secret electrical process that could revolutionise the sugar industry.

His demonstrations were convincing and at the time, investors were throwing money at him. But almost nobody was allowed to see how it worked.

So what exactly was going on inside his locked refinery?

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War often calls for quick thinking and unconventional tactics, but few battles have ever been won with… potatoes. But, during World War II, the USS O’Bannon, a U.S. Navy destroyer, found itself in a tense standoff with a Japanese submarine. With the enemy dangerously close, too near in fact for their deck guns to be effective, the crew resorted to a rather unexpected weapon. 

This is the incredible tale of how the USS O’Bannon used quick thinking, and a well-stocked pantry, to help sink a Japanese submarine.


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Website: wildhistoryofwar.com

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At it’s very core, war is essentially throwing everything you have at your enemy hoping that they break first, and at times that breaking point can be as much a psychological one as a physical one. 

Wars of attrition, as in the case of prolonged siege warfare, is all about seeing who can last the longest. 

And today's story is all about one of those siege warfare breaking points, and how an army was defeated by a woman who had nothing but her cunning, boldness and two loaves of bread.


SUBSCRIBE TO THE WILD HISTORY OF WAR:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1896816399
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033nrBsVgo8URSbobSZIhU

Website: wildhistoryofwar.com

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The entire experience of eating a fancy meal these days is no longer just about the food itself. For decades, chefs like Heston Blumenthal have been creating entire culinary experiences to delight all of your senses at once, pairing sounds, smells and textures along with the already delicious flavours of their food.

But while this trend has taken off again more recently, this is by no means a modern practice. In fact, as far back as the early 1600’s an innovative chef by the name of Robert May was creating similar sensory dining experiences all around Elizabethan England.

Today, we’ll discover just who this man was, and how he went about revolutionising banquets into what would come to be called his "Spectacle Feasts".

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Sources for this episode's research:

• https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-aaron-mahnkes-cabinet-of-c-29519194/episode/chefs-table-172173292/
• https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-fantastical-feasts-of-englands-first-celebrity-chef
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_May_(cook)

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Thank you to my all of my supporters! 

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It’s well into the northern european winter season at the end of 1939. Five hundred thousand Russian Soviet Soldiers are making a collective push northwards, swarming the countryside as they go. They are armed to the hilt with tanks, explosives, machine guns, grenades and a staggeringly overwhelming number of troops.

But there is one thing that they didn’t count on, one thing that threatened to derail their entire military offensive altogether. And that one thing, was the humble sausage.

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Thank you to my brand-new supporters:

• Josh Lovetere
• Zachary Hedden

You too can support me on Patreon for just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod

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Sources for this episode's research:

• https://www.history.com/news/the-bizarre-sausage-war-that-inspired-hitler
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Varolampi_Pond
• https://www.finlandatwar.com/the-sausage-war-an-army-marches-on-its-stomach/
• https://sofrep.com/news/sausage-war-when-hunger-got-the-best-of-the-soviets/
• https://short-history.com/sausage-war-733d71767317
• https://pennytyrrellmcqueen.wixsite.com/togetherapart/single-post/2016/10/26/sausage-war

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.

Thank you to my all of my supporters! 

You can also support me over on Patreon starting from just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod

For the majority of history they were considered the ultimate delicacy by European nobility who just couldn’t get enough of them. From snack to status symbol, the pineapple has graced many a King and Queens palace courts, while outside of them they took on a mythical quality akin to some sort of precious jewel.

Today, we’ll track the pineapples voyage across the seas and into the history books as it became synonymous with the very peak of royal de rigeour.

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Thank you to our brand-new supporter:

• Sarah Thompson

You too can support me on Patreon for just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod

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Sources for this episode's research:

• https://www.thedailymeal.com/1233796/in-the-1700s-pineapples-were-wildly-expensive-symbols-of-prosperity/
• https://www.britannica.com/plant/pineapple
• https://www.bimstore.co/resources/10-facts-about-pineapples
• https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/a-brief-history-of-foods-pineapple
• https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/25/the-strange-history-of-the-king-pine/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3-uKgiyE3Y
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple#:~:text=Precolonial%20cultivation,-The%20wild%20plant&text=By%20the%20late%201400s%2C%20cropped,it%20into%20India%20by%201550.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.

Thank you to my all of my supporters! 

You can also support me over on Patreon starting from just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod