Breakfast in Jane Austen's England

I mistakenly call the Bennet family middle class. They are actually on the lower end of the untitled gentry. It's more their being country rather than city dwellers that is important regarding their breakfast habits. For the full written recipe, head to my new website www.tastinghistory.com/recipes/bathbuns

Jane Austen has the one of the most universally haunting things all people have suffered...unannounced visitors.

Former pastry chef here. You can make candy coated caraway seeds at home! Kitchen Aid mixers have a coating attachment. That's basically a smaller version of the turning copper tubs used to make coated candies and nuts. I'd love to see you make some old candies and candied nuts.

For Caraway comfits, just go to any Indian store, and purchase "sugar coated Saunf", preferably the color-free version. Saunf (usually) means fennel seeds, although sometimes it can also mean aniseeds or even caraway seeds. The three are rather similar in taste, and regional variations in taste (e.g. Lucknowi Saunf vs "Vhariyali Saunf" from Gujarat) means that any of the three can be used to make Saunf. It is typically used as a palate cleanser at the end of Indian meals, so you've probably tasted it in an Indian restaurant. In any case, the products sold in the US will have the exact ingredients listed on the container. so you should be fine!

I'm pregnant and having a lot of morning sickness, and for some reason the one thing that makes it possible for me to eat a real meal is watching these Tasting History videos while I do. Thanks, Max, for keeping me fed!

Considering how much of Austen's work was based on social commentary, it's amazing it has held up so well, even though we've lost so much of the context. It makes one wonder just how much funnier the books must have been for her contemporaries.

Just wanted to tell you that your channel helped us bond with our new in-law family! Over Thanksgiving my new son-in-law’s brother came with the pumpkin cheesecake from your book, and I immediately said, “Tasting His..” and he finished my sentence! He even brought the book to the gathering, and we had a great time discussing the recipes. What might have taken years was accomplished in minutes!

Re. "wedding breakfasts"... I remember as a child ( And I am Old!), asking my mother why, in the early 1960s, our family's Catholic weddings were always so early in the day--most often between 8 and 11 a.m. (This was pre-Vatican II, which changed the Catholic requirements for "fasting" before mass) So, before the late1960s, Catholics (and Anglicans as well in Jane Austen's times) were supposed to fast for 12 hours before receiving the Eucharist (Communion) in their churches. And churches were where most weddings took place. So the reason for those early Catholic (and Anglican) weddings was that people had to fast before receiving of the Eucharist in church---and an afternoon/evening wedding would be very difficult if you had refrain from all foods and beverages for such a l-o-n-g time. And after the marriage act in England was passed, basically it required that all weddings HAD to be performed in Anglican churches. Hence: the early morning wedding....and therefore the celebratory feast following the wedding was a true "breaking of the fast" Break-Fast.

“Nothing ever changes” probably the best distillation of this entire channel into 3 words. Well done, Max.

Austen is telling us so much more about Darcy and Bingley in the breakfast scene. See, Bingley was the son of a middle class merchant who was trying to social climb. That means Bingley and his sister Caroline often act snobbishly because they don't want to be seen as the Bennets were. Everything they did had to be done as up-to-the-minute fashionably as they could. It's also hinting that Darcy isn't as snobbish as Lizzie thinks because he's hanging out with Bingley, who is basically the Regency's version of the nouveau riche.

One of the reasons Jane has so many breakfast scenes is that it was her job in the family to get breakfast when she and her sister and mother lived at the cottage at Chawton. She would get up early to write and then make breakfast. It meant that she was in charge of the tea and had the key to the tea chest which was a big deal...Also it should be noted that English breakfast, even for the very wealthy was the one meal that was served buffet style so that people could come and go whenever and serve themselves. It was as much a convenience for the household as it was for the servants who had to get up when it was still dark and light the stove etc. I don't think Jane Austen would have been doing more than making tea on a fire which a servant built and slicing bread a servant baked. As limited as their circumstances were and as informal as their house was, it still wouldn't have been appropriate for her to do that labor.

I love your analysis of Pride and Prejudice, Max. This is why I always recommend to interested first time Austen readers to read annotated versions of her stories. The social context is key to the stories and adds a dimension and richness that the films cannot convey. Superlative episode. Watching you grow over time has been a real pleasure. You are a true food historian.

You can get fennel seed comfits in Indian markets. They often offer them after the meal, sometimes at the cash register, sort of like restaurants sometimes have mints. I have the book you showed. I really enjoyed it. I’ll need to read The Time Traveler’s Guide.

Jane Austen…Breakfast…and Tasting History Tuesday? Max is spoiling us today y’all 🙌

A couple of points on the comfits - they were often (usually?) brightly coloured, and they're the progenitor to hundreds and thousands/rainbow sprinkles - so adding those alongside caraway may have been quite accurate, for a sprinkles cake type effect! The caraway comfits might be very hard to come by, but fennel ones are sold in most indian supermarkets as "methay sounf".

A few years ago I read about someone spending the night at a friend's house when he was a kid. What really caught him by surprised that when they sat down to eat and said the prayer, everyone pulled out a book and started reading. Nobody talked about anything. He didn't have a book and just sat there in amazement. According to him, every kid in that family went into prestigious fields as adults such as lawyers, doctors, professors, and businessmen.

I want a whole Jane Austen/Georgian/Regency series!

Jane Austen was such a great writer. She wrote the original books "about nothing", but made them into page-turners. I also re-read them all every few years. She was one of the first writers to incorporate a mystery into her work. Namely in "Emma", WHO sent Jane Fairfax the piano? (This plays a larger role in the book than it does in the recent "Emma" film.) The question of Harriet Smith's parentage never rises to a mystery since Emma erroneously proclaims early on that he is a gentleman. With Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens on its roster, England's place in literary history was cemented.

I live about 10 miles from Bath and I'd never heard of Bath buns. You learn so much on this channel.

I always wonder how Max is so well-prepared with thematically appropriate Pokemon plushies to put in the background of his videos.