civility first, i think that area is over and it should be over because they take the notion to win over people is by being completely civil and consolatory with people who disdain your lifestyle and want to control so my aspects of your life. >> all 92000 plus hours of book tv isvailable online, visit booktv.org to watchful programs on your favorite authors. now an extra 24 hours of tv this christmas day here are some of the programs you will see atlantic staff writer chronicles the life and political career of mitt romney. . . .

you can find a full schedule of what is airing today on your program guide or by visiting booktv.org. starting now you to personally max miller discusses his cookbook which explores history through recipes. >> joining us now is youtube or max miller, , he is the author f this new book, "tasting history." ilfirst of all, how did you get into cooking innt the first pla? >> guest: yeah. it's actually a funny story. iwi was on a vacation at disney world with my friend, and she got sick. we spent the entire vacation in her hotel room watching the great british bake-off. i became enamored with it and i dave cook too make anything before but i loved that show so much that i decided to teach myself how to bake everything they were baking. over the next coupleye of yearsi

did just that. that's i got into baking and into the history of food because it used to talk with history of food on the show. >> host: what made you put this up on youtube, your expert mentation? >> guest: a friend at. i would bring in my creations to myt coworkers and let them try them but they had to listen to a lecture on history at the same time. one of my coworkers said you should put this up on youtube. so i did and it worked out. >> host: how many subscribers do you have now? >> guest: i i think i just passed 1.7 million. >> host: when and how did is to become a part of your cooking show? >> guest: history was really actually the beginning of it. i've been a fan of history since i can remember come since as littleic boy listening to my grandfathers stories to me was history. so really food for me was a way to explore history and it's a way to cut put myself in the

shoes of people who live in the past, getting to be what they might have eaten. of the show crux and then food is kind of the way i presented. >> host: with george washington recognize what we eat today? >> guest: many things yes, but definitely not in their current form. food was definitely simpler. we have so many more influences from international cuisine now and so many other ingredients that were not available but then were a lotha of ingredients that were more popular. they used to put that net g everything during the late 18th century here in the u.s. we don't do that very often anymore. there's similarities but there are a lot of differences as well. >> host: what was the purpose of not make? >> guest: it was just a flavor that was very popular. flavors, and go in popularity

throughout the ages. for most of the last 100 years salt-and-pepper have been the spices of choice. that's what's on on a table n you goo to a restaurant, but that's not always been the case. in the past it was that make up for a long time in the sugar if you're wealthy, you just have sugar on the table. different spices come and go and that changes even now in different parts of the world. you were not going to find the spices on a table, say, in japan. it will be something else. it's always evolving. >> host: how were you able to find some of these ancient recipes and how far back do they go tasting history? >> guest: the oldest recipe i found comes from about 4000 years ago from the yale babylonian tablets, and they are literally cuneiform tablets that that's a very early recipes, probably the earliest recipes that we have. most of the recipes ith find are simply from old cookbooks, old

texts and whatnot that i found unallotted museums and libraries put their works upon line. so i can just go through and find whatever i need. but then there are some that come from poems or stories or diary entries, of those are always a little bit more difficult to find but they are often the more interesting ones because they are not written as recipes ask others a little bit more detective work on my end that he have to work it to do. >> host: are some of these recipes included in "tasting history" some of these ancient recipes? >> guest: absolutely. so the book goes through the last 4000 4000 years. they start in babylon, they go to ancient egypt and rome through the age of china and the middle east although it up through about the 19 teens. >> host: let's go back to that 4000 year old recipe. what was it and were you able to

re-create it? >> guest: i was. there are a number of recipes in those texts. the ones that i did were a beat stew that had some land in it, and then a lamb stew that is more focused on the lam and it has some milk and then rice, proto-crouton to give it a bit of a texture and a crunch. i re-create or both. the thing is, with that old of a recipe that are words in it that have no translation. scholars can't really agree, their best guessss but that's i. some holes ands you just o had to kind of be oky with that and make the best version that you can. >> host: did you ever have trouble finding some of the ingredients that you needed for these older recipes? >> guest: absolutely. some unfortunately simply don't exist anymore. and if they do exist they are

changed. ingredients have just changed over the last hundreds and definitely thousands of years, and then some are just difficult to find, like the sheep that should be used in the old recipes is that tailed sheep which those arere still around t they are very difficult to find, especially in southern california. i had to use regular sheep, sheep meat, which was f fine. but yes, sometimes it's impossible come sometimes it's just so difficult that have to be okay using at more modern version. but the point of the book really is to let a people make these at home. so i never want it to be too difficult to find something. i always give you c an alternate that you can use. >> host: so you've done some modern updates to these recipes in the sense? >> guest: absolutely. i started the channel when i was, dreadlocks down. so i was in my condo and didn't have a lot of access to anything that wasn't at the corner store.

so i made the show to be dishes that you can make in your kitchen, that you can get most of the ingredients. a once inin a while i'll throw n an ingredient that is just too interesting to not try to use it so sometimes you have to go on to thet internet to find those. but . but that's part of the financial. >> host: max miller, whether some recipes we just got started and couldn't finish because the taste just didn't appeal to your modernrn sensibilities or you jt couldn't find the right ingredients? >> guest: when it comes to the tastes, that's part of the fun of the show. those recipes that ended up not being very good did make it into the cookbook of course, but on the show i go all the way. even if it's a terrible tasting dish, i still taste it because it's the history then that becomes so important. >> host: but i'll be would sayst, and she don't make this, this is definitely a dish that has become extinct for a reason.

>> host: florence f nightingale appears in "tasting history." what's the connection? >> guest: yet. so i do a recipe for a bread pudding that was served during the civil war in hospitals on the unionon side, and that recie comes from originally a a rece that was used during the crimean war and would have been stripped and hospitals that florence nightingale worked in. it's very interesting because it's not like bread pudding we know today. it's more like a steamed pudding which are still popular in england. it's just interesting to see how the foods that were being served to those who were wounded were quite different than to the people who were actually doing the fighting. it was kind of like if you're going to the hospital you will at least get to typically eat better. so that was the what upside being wounded i suppose. >> host: d to find that are

times in history where shortcuts were made because they had to be, such as during wartime? >> guest: absolutely. lately i've been doing a lot of rationing videos. during world war i and world war ii, and before that of course, rationing was always an issue. so you would have to deal with not having access to ingredients. the sugarbeet actually in general came about during the 19th century when sugar wasn't being imported too mainland europe because english have blockaded it from napoleon. and so they develop sugar from the sugarbeet to get sweetness into the food. >> host: well, we can't talk about the history of food without talking about rome. when we recognize some of the ancient roman foods that they ate? >> guest: yes. there are some that are not to

change. there are some early forms of french toast and omelettes, but one thing that is extremely different is many of the recipes that we could even kind of recognize use some very different ingredients that we would never ever use, like gary, which is a fermented fish sauce that was usedd in almost everything even their desserts which sometimes have this fermented fishsh sauce which les a very complex and a bit of a saltiness to the food. but it's that something that we typically would usese today. >> host: who was rufus estes? >> guest: rufus estes was a man come was born into slavery, and after the civil war he began learning how to cook, and he worked his way although it up to being the head chef for the pullman car company which were very, very fancy train cars for the elite of america.

and he really created a cuisine that was used in those train cars for decades afterward, and he became one of the top celebrity chefs in america. his story is absolutely fascinating, and his cuisine is interesting because it's kind of a combination of the foods that he grew up eating along with the foods of the very wealthy and the elite, kind of combined together. it's wonderful, wonderful foods. >> host: max miller, over the span of history that you look at, have been some consistent ingredients or consistent foods that are still eaten today? >> guest: yeah. it's usually the easiest ones to grow, the easiest ones to get, onions and garlic and oils of any kind. you know, really does basic ingredients, they just appear

all over the world and all throughout cuisine in general. but one of the things that is always appearing in different forms is spices. every civilization has always wanted some sort of spice to kind of flavor these foods. and while the spices have changed obviously, the desire to get them even some of them are very laborious to produce, everyone loves spices in some way or another throughout history. >> host: what about breads and grains? >> guest: absolutely. ite mean, bread is the staple of most diets honestly in some way, shape, or form, and the way that it's made hasn't really changed all that much. you've got flatbreads and you got risen breads or leavened breads, and yeast,lt salt, flour and water, that's all that's in

most of s them, and there are jt so many types of bread throughout history, just with those four ingredients, it's pretty amazing how many variations we have come up with those few ingredients. >> host: max miller, when you look at this history, what about culture and religion playing a role in the development of recipes? >> guest: religion and, i mean food is culture. that's just definite. you can track the way that people have migrated throughout the world based on the foods that they brought with them and' intermingled and how it's changed as they had met with other cultures, sometimes not so friendly. but when it comes to religion, food has always been such an important part of people's lives. i i think that we don't really appreciate it the way that people used to because of the amount of time and labor that went into getting food, that it has always been a part of

religion because food was truly life. and even one of the earliest recipes, and i say recipes, for beer, it's actually, it is a him -- was a goddess of beer and it's from ancient samaria, and it's just a list of what you do to make this early form of beer and he was considered a sacred drink, but it was also great that you could drink every day so they are intertwined and always have been. >> host: what's the connection if therect is one between pretzs and monks? >> guest: so pretzels have a lot of stories that grew up around their creation, and nobody really knows how they were created but many of the original stories say thated they were created by monks. some say that they were created to mimic the shape of crossing

your arms against your chest when you were in prayer. others say that they were created by monks during a siege of vienna when the ottoman turks were coming in, and ended up making these pretzels down in the basement as they heard the turks burrowing underneath the city walls. but they are always connected with monks, and if you go back to medieval art, the pretzel is often shown on the table during the last supper, which it definitely didn't exist at that time, but it did exist in the medieval version of the last supper. so you often have different saints and jesus and pretzels side-by-side. >> host: max miller, you are appearing on c-span so he can't go too long without talking about politics. first lady lucy hayes makes an appearance in "tasting history."

>> guest: yes. lemonade lucy, she, probably didn't call herself that but many people did, probably in a little bit of a not nice manner. she was a teetotaler and was part of the prohibition movement years before prohibition went into effect but part of that temperance movement. and so she promoted lemonade as a way to get people to stop drinking alcohol. instead they could have lemonade. and so she and rutherford b. hayes made lemonade very often in the white house. it's an clear how onboard he was with his come but she seemed to be in charge when it came to the beverages at the white house so she got the nickname lemonade lucy. >> host: and on the opposite end of the spectrum was the one of the gin craze. >> guest: yes, very opposite end of the spectrum. so the london gin craze was a time in 18th century when so much gin was being consumed by

the population in london, pints of june a day per person, that they essentially had to ban it. there were more gin outlets in london then there are in businesses in london today. it was really, really a crazy time because much of the gin was adulterated, and so what had things like arsenic and different ingredients in it that could kill you, and it became such a problem that the government actually had to step in and kind of push people away from gin, and instead gotten into beer. >> host: max miller, another recipe you have in "tasting history" is the sole cake. what is that? >> guest: so soul cakes are really one of the early forms of the trick-or-treating. people would go around on all souls day which is just after halloween and saying to their neighbors asking for these little cakes that would often

have a cross on them or other symbolism. and it was a way, it was basically you give me these little soul cakes and i will pray for your loved ones who have passed on. and it wasas the early form of e trick-or-treating. obviously now we go for candy and it's more of a fine thing, but in the early days it was rather serious, but still a lot of fun. >> host: who wish or co-author? >> guest: she is absolutely fantastic. so when it comes to actually recipe writing, there is an art to it. there is an art to getting what i do in the kitchen to be replicated by someone who was just reading those words on the page. and it is skill that in many cooks just don't possess. so ann does have that skill and so she took my ramblings and format them in a way that will

actually let you make things in the kitchen. >> host: and, of course, we have to remember the role of maureen in this book and your youtube success. >> guest: yes. so maureen is one who got sick on our vacation and get me in a hotel room while we were at disney world and watched the great british bake-off. so she's the one who i credit for giving me my passion for baking, even though it was just by watching a tv show. she's also the one that in those early episodes i would think about when i i was writing my scripts and talking to the camera was this is how i would tell my friend maureen about whatever i waser making that da. >> host: what did you learn in the writing of this book and looking at the history? if you had to put in a sentence or two, what did you learn? >> guest: two contradictory things. one is that our tastes have

changed widely in many ways, they become much more sophisticated. witches have access to so many more ingredients and tastes, and our cuisine is more varied today than anytime in the past. on the other hand, we haven't changed that much. our passion for food, our attention to what food means to the cultural significance of having fancy food on the table and beingle able to take people out to a nice restaurant, instead back then it was having the food at your house but it was a way to impress people. we haven't changed all that much, so two contradictory things. >> host: max miller is the author of thisis book, "tasting history: explore the past through 4,000 years of recipes." we appreciate your being on booktv. >> guest: thank you so much for having me, peter. >> next it is both tvs in depth program pulitzer