Tasting History: Explore the Past through 4,000 Years of Recipes (A Cookbook) Hardcover – April 18, 2023

In February of 2020, Max Miller started the YouTube show Tasting History with Max Miller. It soon became an internet sensation. And Max an almost overnight success. I didn’t find Tasting History until a year ago when it popped up in my YouTube feed and what a delight this show is. If you are a Food Network fan, you will understand that Tasting History is a solid mix of Alton Browns Good Eats and The Two Fat Ladies. It’s a brilliant show that takes a recipe from long ago, gives you the history of the dish, and then shows you how to make it. A few of my favorite episodes are Pumpion Pie the fore runner of our pumpkin pie, Gingerbread, and Soul Cakes.Max Didn’t start out life as a cook or a chef. It was on a trip to Disney World with a friend where he got stuck in the hotel as his friend got sick. They binge watched early episodes of the Great British Baking Show with the original hosts and format. This format occasionally gave some history to the food the contestants were preparing. Max got hooked and began to become his own home cooking master. Just before Covid hit, he began his show Tasting History with Max Miller. After Covid hit Max got furloughed from his job but his show really took off. Everyone was home, and everyone was cooking. His show soared in popularity and a YouTube legend was born.I have to admit that I am a bit of a snob. YouTube shows seemed to be about well-to-do young people showing off their swag. I liked the clips of old movies and TV shows and seeing the inside of the rehearsal rooms for Broadway shows but beyond that I felt YouTube had very little of interest to me Max changed that.I love Tasting History. I have yet to actually cook from his show, but I will soon. The recipes, though truly ancient at times, he has made clear and adapted for a modern kitchen. His history lessons are spot on. In anticipation of the crowning of King Charles, Max did a show on Coronation Chicken, a dish that was served at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. It looked delicious and fairly simple to make. While preparing the dish, he gave us quite the history of English coronation Banquets.His show is run once a week and releases on Tuesdays. Anyone who loves good cooking and wonderful stories will love this show. And to top it off Max has just released his first cookbook called Appropriately Tasting History by Max Miller with Ann Volkien. This book has 4000 years’ worth of recipes. I know this because it says so on the cover. The book is divided into five sections. The Ancient World, The British Isles, Continental Europe, The Near and Far East and The New World.Each recipe in the book has a history lesson on the particular dish and the time it was prepared. The Recipe follows the history. The recipes are clear and easy to understand. Some of the ingredients may be not what you normally find in your pantry but most of the more exotic ingredients, if not all, can be found for purchase via the Internet.Personally, I have found purchasing ingredients on the internet to find ingredients you can’t get here. Mary Berry, the British equivalent to Julia Child or Rachel Ray, made gingerbread from stem ginger. I had no idea what stem ginger was, but I found it easily accessible with an Internet search.Max’s book is fun, and entertaining and I can’t wait to dive in and try some of the recipes here. There’s an ancient Lamb Stew, a British mead, a European Beef with Garlic Harvester Sauce (The recipe is specifically from Transylvania), Little Meat Cakes from China, and from The New World, an amazing recipe for Egg Nog. I know this one will be good as I saw him make it on the show.This is really a great cookbook and a lot of fun. I can see it being used as a reference book or even the basis of school projects. The more we get to know about ancient and surrounding cultures the more we come together and bond as the one big world family we truly are and food always speaks for us.If you have yet to watch Max on YouTube, I highly recommend him. If you have watched him then you know how good he is so get out there and buy those cookbooks. You’ll be glad you did.

If you love Tasting History, you need this book. More recipes, more stories and all with Max's unique style. Whether you plan on experimenting with these recipes or just keeping it around, it'll look good on your shelf and provide inspiration for kitchen adventures.

This is an excellent cookbook if you, like me, enjoy historical dishes but have a hard time parsing through the originals. This book offers clear instruction and fun little nuggets of history.What I enjoy the most is that this book actually has recipes that a person can enjoy often! I have a few other cookbooks that are geared towards historical recipes and, while they are fun and I enjoy the things I've made, they mostly sit unused unless I have a spare weekend and it tickles my fancy. With this book, there are enough simple and tasty recipes included that it can be used as any other cookbook. I made the Douce Ame for dinner after work; just a casual Monday night dinner of capon in milk and honey (or regular ol' chicken, in my case :) ) and it was both easy and delicious. I will definitely be making it again. Being able to add a recipe from c. 1390 to my rotation of meals is very fun.The book itself is well-written and the images are delightful. The cover has already stood up to some mild kitchen-adjacent abuse. There is a nice broad range of recipes, from the simple, weeknight-friendly to the "maybe for a Sunday with nothing else going on". The front of the book offers explanations and replacements for the ingredients that might be outlandish or hard to source for our modern lives, which I appreciate.So, all that to say, if you enjoy the channel and/or you enjoy historical recipes, this is an excellent purchase.

One armchair historian and amateur chef whose intellectual inquisitiveness, indomitable spirit, and immense charm guides the reader effortlessly through the historical background of a dish and provides comprehensive instructions on how to prepare it with available ingredients or helpful substitutions for those hard-to-find ingredients; a spirit of adventure on the reader's part to understand that this cookbook is unlike any other he or she has probably read before; an understanding that the dishes this cookbook presents come from diverse cultures and peoples the world over; and a willingness to delve into how history has influenced what we eat today. In short, these ingredients are the essential part of the master recipe for all those contained in "Tasting History: Explore the Past through 4,000 Years of Recipes. "Just a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon Max Miller's YouTube channel, "Tasting History with Max Miller," and, truth be told, I was captivated from the start. The first episode I watched was the one where he prepared the fish sauce garum from scratch using a less intricate recipe than another one. I immediately thought that either this guy has to be inspired by his love of history to prepare such recipes of antiquity from their best original source, or that he is totally crazy. After watching a few more episodes, I was inexorably convinced that he is, indeed, crazy for his twin loves of history and cooking. In his series of YouTube episodes, his intellectual curiosity for history takes him to diverse eras and locales to deduce when a particular recipe first appeared and how it has evolved, if it actually has, from its origins. He is also more than ready to debunk false histories surrounding recipes, such as those surrounding potato chips. When I discovered that he had written a cookbook, I realized that I had to obtain a copy to read, enjoy, and cook from. I was a bit apprehensive, though, because I doubted that his lighthearted, charming personality so clearly on display in his presentations would adequately be conveyed in written form.I need not have worried. Max's bubbly personality, insatiable curiosity, and quest for accuracy clearly shine through this entire book. The histories preceding each recipe convey a synopsis of the history of the recipe, and the recipes themselves could not be easier to follow. I began to "test drive" this cookbook by making a few of the easier recipes (Aztec Chocolate, page 217; French Lemonade, page148; Bread Pudding, page 224) before proceeding to some of the more detailed ones (Onion Soup with Milk, page 151; Pancakes from 1658 England, page 93). The recipes all turned out excellently, and, I must admit, the pancake recipe has now spoiled me for any other pancake recipe I've ever made. Similarly, the onion soup recipe has opened my eyes to a new version that is as good as, if not better than, the broth-based recipe most people swear by.Now, I must admit that I will probably never prepare all the recipes Max has included in his book. For example, the recipe for Spartan Black Broth (page 28) has an ingredient that I probably couldn't get even if I were willing--but, then again, I have never wanted to be a Spartan warrior anyway. (I've never prepared all the recipes like the stuffed boar's head from the "Joy of Cooking," either.) But the recipes I have prepared from Max's book entice me to discover more in this cookbook, and even more from his YouTube series.For those of you who are still unsure as to whether to purchase this cookbook, I would heartily suggest that you watch some of Max's "Tasting History" episodes on YouTube to introduce yourself to this unique historian/chef/bon vivant. I am certain that, if you enjoy cooking and you enjoy learning from an expert in his field, you will find "Tasting History: Explore the Past through 4,000 Years of Recipes" a worthwhile, if not essential, addition to your cookbook library. My only regret is that I don't have an autographed copy!