How Gold Rush Miners Ate in the Wild West

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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza | IG @worldagainstjose

PHOTO CREDITS

#tastinghistory #goldrush

[thehunzz]

Gold Miner Menu
- Successful day: Whiskey
- Unsuccessful day: Whiskey

[mirandamom]

My husband’s family discovered a mine in Montana in the 1880s. They promptly sold it and opened a general store in Butte. My grandfather in law once told me that the smart move wasn’t to dig for gold, it was to sell shovels to men who dug for gold.

[The_Kentuckian]

"Stewed jackass rabbit" had me rolling. I'm sure it's the long name for a jack rabbit, but I like to imagine the writer just has a beef with rabbits.

[calisweete]

4th grade teacher in California here! You don’t understand how excited this video makes me! I will be making biscuits and gravy with my students during our gold rush unit next school year. To analyze the gold rush through a gastronomist lens is absolutely exhilarating. I know my students will love it. Thank you max!

[robroaring]

The Cornish pastie was designed especially for the English miners. It was shaped the way it was, so it could be placed in the helmet of said miner, so it would be quite warm when eaten. Also, the original pastie, had a turned piece of pastry at each end, so the coal miner could hold the pastie with his filthy fingers and eat it, then discard those end bits.
I’m a 54 yo Pastry-chef, and when I was a 16yo apprentice, I had a teacher who was from Cornwall in England. His Da, and Grand da where miners. This came straight from him. Such an amazing man he was.

[ardenlorken]

The hard tack joke will never grow old and I can't wait when Max mentions it and I can go Clack-Clack myself with a smile.

[ling_zip]

The Chinese coin shown at 15:53 says 乾隆通寶 ("Circulating Currency of the Qianlong Reign")! The Qianlong Emperor (that's a regnal title, not a name) ruled from 1739 – 1796, so it's probably a lot older than any of the miners that might have used it!

[bustedkeaton]

0:59 [Cookie from 'Atlantis: The Lost Empire' voice] I got your 4 basic food groups! Beans, bacon, whiskey, and lard!

[Duskets]

“And how would you like your steak cooked?”
“Evil”

[nicoles]

As a Canadian who is fond of our neighbours to the south, I can honestly say that biscuits and gravy is the best thing to have ever come out of the United States.

[Great_Olaf]

The reason for mixing the baking soda into the milk first is that old baking soda wasn't as good as it is today, it could take some time to activate, and often needed to be hydrated before it was put into whatever you were making.

[mil_enrama]

Fun fact relating to the Chinese prospectors: the original Chinese word for California is 金山 gam saan (pronounced "gum sawn") which means "gold mountain" or "gold mine"!

California was so synonymous with the gold rush that when you were going to california, you just said "I'm going to the Gold Mine".

[josepholiveira]

I grew up in gold rush country, not far from Placerville and Angel's Camp.
My class went on a camping trip along the banks of a creek where we did a small Gold Rush LARP. The kids would pan the river for black sand; we'd then turn the sand in to the teachers running the 'bank', who would give us play-money based on the quantity and purity of the sand. The play-money could be used to buy candy and snacks at a store.
Every kid was allowed to have one turn as a shopkeep at the store, keeping the play-money they got while working. Inevitably, the shopkeeps would make far, far more money than the 'gold'-panners, which wound up being the Big Lesson of the trip--that the people who got rich off the gold rush were the people selling supplies, not the miners.
We also, of course, had a dinner of pork and beans.

[frugalprepper]

My dad grew up in Appalachia with 11 brothers on sister and his mother. He grew up by a town called Hanging Dog in North Carolina, in a one room cabin without electricity or running water. His dad left when he was 4. The lived on biscuits and gravy. The grew the wheat harvested it and trashed it by hand. Carried into Murphy on there backs and the mill kept half and milled the other half into flour for them. Some of them worked on a dairy farm so the got milk for free and churned there own butter. The also grew green beans and canned them in old wire bail mason jars. My dad had to watch the fire and keep the water boiling for them. One year they had bologna for Christmas and it was a big deal, he had never had it before. My dad saw his first electric light bulb when he was 14 and the moved to Ohio.

[jezkell]

As an Ecuadorian I'm glad Caspar was a pretty terrible turtle catcher, we're still going through it in recovering them, they're absolutely gorgeous and definetly huge! Great video as always Max <3

[catherineoneal]

When I lived in Maine, I always made Biscuits and Gravy (used sausage instead of salt pork, THAT was for N.E. Clam Chow-dah) for my late husband on the first day of hunting season. It was a very early rise for us and it was one of the few days we actually ate breakfast together as the winter weather was setting in. For the women that day it was shopping at the local department store where they offered 40% off from 6 am till 7 am, 30% off from 7 am till 8 am and so forth till they ran out of %. I always got there before 6 so that I could do my Christmas shopping that day. I relished that day every year till he died in January of 2005. I still try to have biscuits and gravy every year in his memory, though I have to honestly say I have missed a couple here and there.

[jayviescas]

My guess for why she mixed the salty baking soda into the milk is that they didn't have access to anti-clumping agents like silicon dioxide back then and dry sodium bicarbonate mixed with sodium chloride probably clumped more than either salt compound would by itself and moisture would help them to un-clump resulting in a smoother mixture. Just a guess based on years of cooking and having worked in a chemistry stockroom while an undergrad in college.

[Kit-vbrm]

My Grandfather was Scottish. He would make Scots pancakes, a mix of flour, a little baking powder, milk 😊with a little water, salt and a handful or two of dried fruit. He would make this into a dough and form several small flat patties and cook them in the cast iron oven alongside the fire grate. Coming in from school on a cold day, we were greeted with a cup of tea and a plateful of these delicious
cakes. And they were delicious.

[MsLeenite]

So we got to see 3 Maxes in this episode: Cerro Gordo Max, Editor Max, and Clack-Clack Max. Groovy!

[ScholarlyScalawag]

0:10 quite possibly the rawest, most primal and honorable description of a group of men ive ever heard