The list of fad diets out there today is a long one and I've tried them all,
keto, Atkins, paleo, but I have never tried the first fad diet from Georgian England
Doctor George Chaney's vegetable and milk diet which is
why I'm making this 18th century milk soup
so thank you to Hellofresh for sponsoring this video as I make milk soup
this time on Tasting History.
So it's that time of year where it seems everyone is starting a new diet and so I thought it would be a good time
to explore one of the first fad diets from 18th century England
where celebrity diet doctor George Chaney prescribed "a total abstinence from animal foods of all kinds,
and all sorts of strong and fermented liquors, keeping only to milk, with seeds or grains,
and the different kind of vegetable food."
And it was really hard for me to find a period recipe that kind of went with this diet because
it seems that George Chaney was a bit of an outlier for the time
being a vegetarian especially one who didn't drink liquor and so there aren't a lot of recipes
written with him in mind.
Most vegetable recipes from the time are cooked with beer or brandy,
or with bacon or some sort of meat stock and most of those that aren't are just too
boring to warrant making here on the show it's like boil carrots, salt and serve,
gonna be a short episode.
So I turned to the milk portion of the diet and even then it was kind of hard to find anything
but I finally found an interesting recipe that technically didn't break any of his rules
because while Cheney did prohibit meat and alcohol he had nothing really to say about
sugar. He mentions it only a couple times in his writings and then as a good thing to help clear up a cough.
So technically this recipe from 'The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy' by Hannah Glass
is a diet food.
'Milk Soup the Dutch way.
Boil a quart of milk with cinnamon and moist sugar;
put sippets in the dish, pour the milk over it, and set it over a charcoal fire to simmer till the bread is soft.
Take the yolks of two eggs, beat them up, and mix it with a little of the milk, and throw it in;
mix it all together, and send it up to table."
So this might not meet any of the requirements of a modern diet or at least most of them but it does sound pretty tasty.
Now there are two interesting ingredients that she mentions. First is sipits (or are sipits),
and those were basically little pieces of bread used to kind of dip into soups or sauces or sop up meat juices,
and this one actually has it inside of the soup
so I'm guessing it's going to be kind of like the the crouton on a French onion soup, looking forward to that.
Now the other interesting ingredient is moist sugar
and I just hate saying- saying that but there it is
and I'm going to say it a few more times because in the 18th century just as today there are different ways to buy your sugar.
You could get wet sugar, moist sugar, or dry sugar and while they're not perfectly analogous to modern sugars
the moist sugar would be about the same as light brown or light muscovado sugar.
Now all of the other ingredients should be pretty much self-explanatory just like every ingredient that would ever come with a meal
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though I opted not to do that when I made dijon onion crunch chicken with green beans and garlic bread last night.
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Though I don't think I've ever seen milk soup on Hellofresh's website so we're gonna have to make that ourselves,
and for that what you'll need is: 1 quart plus 3/4 cup or 1.1 liters of whole milk.
The quart was a little bit of a different size in England at the time than it is today in the U.S hence the extra three-quarters cup.
One and a half teaspoons of cinnamon, a third cup or 70 grams of light brown sugar,
2 egg yolks, and 8 to 12 small pieces of bread for sippets.
And there were lots of different ways to make sippets, sometimes they would have the crusts cut off,
sometimes left on, sometimes they would be cut into fun little shapes and then sometimes they would just be left out to dry,
other times toasted and other times they would be dried only after being fried in butter
and Dr Cheney has no prohibition against butter so that's what I'm gonna do.
So first heat three or four tablespoons of butter in a pan
and then add the bread slices and Fry for about a minute on each side or until they're nice and browned.
Then take them out of the pan and put them onto a baking sheet and then put them in the oven
at 225 degrees Fahrenheit or about 105 Celsius for a half an hour,
or until they are nice and dry and crisp.
When they're almost done pour the milk into a pot and whisk in the cinnamon and brown sugar as best you can,
and I say as best you can because for some reason cinnamon really does not want to mix in with milk,
but that's okay because once you heat it up and get it boiling it will come together.
Take the sippets which you've just dried and put them into the milk
and raise the heat until the milk simmers giving it a stir every once in a while making sure that nothing burns,
and the recipe says then to simmer it until the sippets which you just dried out
get nice and soft and so it kind of seems like you're undoing everything that you just did but I promise you
the texture is actually different than if you just took regular fresh bread and and tossed it in,
very very different.
Also this is just one version of milk soup. There are some that are
savory, some that are sweet, some that are creamier, some thicker some with potatoes,
and other things added in, all sorts of types and it's really not something that we we have today anymore
in the U.S or in England but in parts of Central and Eastern Europe it's still eaten a lot.
In fact there is a legendary tale that it was a big bowl of milk soup that was served on a Swiss battlefield in the 16th century
which brought the two armies together long enough to hammer out a peace treaty.
And I may have to dig more into that story and do an entire episode on on its history but for today
the history is all about the first fad diet of Dr George Chaney.
George Cheney was born in Scotland and attended medical school in Edinburgh
before moving to London in 1702 to set up his own practice.
So as a newcomer on the medical scene it was necessary for Dr Cheney to listen to the wise words of his contemporary
Bernard Mandeville who said of starting a practice in London
"If you can chat,and be a good companion, you can drink yourself into practice."
Fortunately George Chaney was a good companion and in no time he was hobnobbing in London's more fashionable clubs and taverns
where it seems he gravitated toward a certain caliber of gentlemen.
"I found the bottle-companions, the younger gentry, and free-livers, to be the most easy of access,
and most quickly susceptible of friendship and acquaintance,
nothing being necessary for the purpose, but to be able to eat lustily, and swallow down much liquor."
He was quite apt at both and while he "grew daily in bulk and in friendship..."
his practice grew as well and soon he found himself working all day and then staying up lay right into the night drinking,
and eating and making new friends. He was living the London high life but soon he found himself to be
growing "excessively fat, short breathed, lethargic and listless."
And in 1705 after only three years of living in London, George Chaney who had never been a slight man
found himself at 32 stone or 450 pounds.
And after a series of "vertiginous paroxysms" which by his description sounds
like mild heart attacks or even strokes he had a complete collapse in his health.
So being a doctor and using his scientific mind he decided that he was going to find a way to solve his his current predicament
and the first part of his solution was to get out of London.
He moved to the country and began to pour over the latest studies and theories about how food and health are related,
and in his studies he met a "Doctor Taylor from Croydon... who by living on milk only,
cured himself of an otherwise incurable distemper... the epilepsy, and lived in perfect health for 16 years after
till an accident cut him off..."
And so Dr Cheney went on a crash diet of "Milk, seeds bread, mealy roots and fruit."
And in a matter of six months he claims that he lost 250 pounds and felt
"Lank, fleet and nimble."
So he returned to London and those who knew him were in awe of this miracle diet and so he he
became a bit of a celebrity but he reverted to his old lifestyle and in a few years
had gained most of the weight back and his health was even worse than before.
So he concluded two things:
London was not for him and it was time to get back on the diet.
He moved his family to Bath and rededicated himself to the diet though in a less strict version,
and he wrote an essay on health and long life and it became a best seller.
Granted some of his case studies were a little bit suspect
like one man who he claims lived to be 169 years old and another named
"Parr died... at the age of 152 years, 9 months;
his diet was old cheese, milk, coarse bread, small beer and Whey:
And he might have lived a good while longer, if he had not changed his diet and air."
Supposedly the 152 year old man moved to London
and began drinking expensive wine and that is what killed him.
And this is when we really have to remember that
as earnest as George Chaney was in solving his problem
he was still practicing medicine in 18th century Britain,
a time when bloodletting and leeches were still in their heyday,
something made clear when Cheney lists the maladies that could be cured with his milk, seed, and vegetable diet.
"Habitual gouts, confirmed cancers, obstinate aerial distempers, the stone in the kidneys,
or in the bladder... the epilepsy... elephantitis and leprosy, a humorous asthma, a chronic diabetes,
an incurable scrophula and a deep scurvy."
I love that he includes a little adjective with each Affliction and my favorite is the humorous asthma because
humorous in the 18th century was not used in in this way to mean funny.
It meant that it was controlled by the humors or
the medical idea that there were four fluids in your body that controlled everything about you both mental and physical,
and the humor that he believed was affected by meat, wine, and ale was the blood.
"The grand secret and solo mean of long life, is to keep the blood and juices in a due state of thinness and fluidity,
whereby they may be able to make the rounds in circulations...
with the fewest rubs and least resistance that may be."
But regardless of some of his reasoning being off
his new and improved diet did seem to work especially because as the years went on
he realized that it wasn't a one size fit all kind of thing and so he would change it slightly
based on each patient, sometimes even including some wine and meat.
And his patients were some of the cream of English society, the philosopher David Hume, the poet Alexander Pope,
future Prime Minister George Grenville, Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame and the founder of methodism Reverend John Wesley.
And it makes sense that these were the people who suffered from what he called the English malady as
"Nervous disorders are the disease of the wealthy, the voluptuous, and the lazy...
and are mostly produced and always aggravated and increased by luxury and intemperance..."
Well I don't think John Wesley would ever be considered luxurious or intemperate but even so.
Now the good doctor was not beloved by all. He had his detractors mostly other doctors. Sour grapes? Perhaps.
But as we've seen Cheney's methods were not above scrutiny.
I mean one thing that he prescribed for some people to do was to
stick their finger down their throat to produce "...gentle vomits..." each morning or else
swallow tobacco to have the same effect,
but it was not the purging that the other doctors scoffed at
but rather his insistence on eating vegetables and getting eight hours of sleep each night.
See Cheney believed that it was unnatural to be awake late into the evening
even though it was something that he had done in his younger years.
The reason being that you were susceptible to the
"noxious damps and vapors" that were produced in the evening hours.
So one should be in bed by 10 pm and should be up by 6 a.m in order to take advantage of
"the fresh, benign, morning air... that cheerfulness and alacrity that is felt by the approach of presence, of that glorious luminary the sun,
which adds a new force to the heart, and a spur to the spirits."
Now the other part of his diet that was absolutely crucial was his insistence on daily exercise,
though nothing too strenuous.
"Certainly riding on horseback is the best of all... next to that is riding in a chaise or chariot."
He says that these were good exercises because it allowed for all of your internal organs to move up and down in unison.
Makes sense. 0_O
"Next to these, are the active games and sports, such as hunting, shooting, bowls, billiards, shuttlecock and the like."
But the exercise should only be physical, never mental.
"Study of difficult and intricate matters will infallibly do hurt. Reading must be light, entertaining, and diverting...
Conversation must be easy and agreeable, without disputes or contradiction."
Now while most of his theories and writings are a little outdated the last section in his very last work
called 'The English Malady' it still speaks so much truth today.
He calls it "the author's own case at large"
and it's a sort of memoir of his weight loss and and health journey and he starts by talking about
when he first lost that 250 pounds and and then regained it and subsequently spent his entire
life losing and regaining and losing and regaining weight in in different amounts.
And he talks about how difficult it is to to stay on any diet especially when it is a very restrictive diet.
The most famous diet doctor of Georgian England who is telling the other great luminaries of his time
how to live a healthy life and yet he struggled to live up to his own standard.
It's interesting to to see this person gain and lose weight because I have struggled with my weight since I was a kid,
and so this really, really resonated with me I have gained and lost
hundreds of pounds throughout my life and so it's just so interesting to hear
his story from 300 years ago and thank gosh
nothing's changed,
and while he battled with this all of his life he did live to the respectable age of 72,
and in his last years he wrote that he had kind of found a middle way of eating.
"My regimen, at present, is milk, with tea, coffee, bread and butter, mild cheese, salad, fruits,
and seeds of all kinds, with tender roots, (as potatoes, turnips, carrots)... dressed, or not, as I like it."
And I'm curious if I'm going to enjoy this milk dressed as milk soup.
And here we are milk soup the Dutch way.
So I have to say I kind of imagined that it would be white when I first read milk soup
but then the fact that you're adding in cinnamon and brown sugar obviously it's going to make it a little bit darker,
often it's made now with white sugar and no cinnamon
so it is still white but um this is not,
but it smells actually really good. Here we go.
[Slurp]
*_*
That is so good.
One more.
Do you like Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
Do you like the milk that is left after you finish Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
Because that is what this is only slightly thicker.
There is not enough egg yolk in there to make it like thick so it is still it's only slightly
thicker than than the milk but the flavor is that of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
I mean it evenit even has toast in it I guess which by the way this sippit I'm going to to take
and see it it holds together. It's not soggy but it is soft I'm gonna take a bite.
It's Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Like I said it would not fit into any diet today and probably
would not be what he thought of as a diet food either. Technically it doesn't break any of his rules
because he didn't really talk about sugar.
Regardless of whether or not it's a diet food you should definitely try it. It's really, really easy to make
and just super delicious,
but it's a dessert. Keep that in mind.
So a Happy New Year to all!
Make sure to follow me on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
I'm actually going to finish this entire thing BUT
dolled out over the next few days.
Temperance.