Heart and mead, today we're eating some heart and mead. Yeah!
I'm sorry, I tried to come up with a better opening than that, but that is the one
that won out. So that's what you get.
But it is true today we are going to be drinking the mead that I made six months ago
now slightly aged as well as eating some roasted heart,
a delicacy enjoyed by kings during the Viking Age.
So thank you to the Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this video as we partake of heart and mead.
This time on Tasting History.
So today's dish was inspired by a conversation that I had with archaeologist Daniel Serra,
co-author with Hanna Tunberg of 'An Early Meal'. We were discussing my desire to re-taste the mead
that I had made back in the fall and I was looking for a dish to accompany it, and he said that the
mead would have been drunk during special occasions because honey was quite expensive,
so we were looking for something that might also be enjoyed on special occasions,
a meal fit for a king you might say.
Enter the heart of a beast
prized for its rarity due to the fact that most animals only have one heart,
and because it's thought to imbue the eater with some of the qualities of the animal so it would
have been a staple at any feast and usually reserved for the guest of honor or the king,
the warlord, whoever was sitting at the high chair.
Now there are no recipes from this time period really,
so we have to rely on archaeology as well as the the writings of the Germanic and Norse people,
and when I read this imagine Sean Bean reading it because it'll give it more gravitas.
"I dreamed my hawks from my hand had flown,
eager for food, to the land of all;
I dreamed their hearts mingled with honey, swollen with blood I ate amid sorrow."
That was from the Poetic Edda, a collection of stories that formed the basis of Norse mythology
and much of the legends of the Germanic people.
Hardly a recipe though. It's basically heart and honey, so we do have one extra ingredient,
and honey is particularly appropriate today because we are tasting our mead.
So for today's recipe what you'll need is: one heart.
Now I'm using pork heart but you can use lamb or beef,
though if you do use beef then you'll probably be inclined to think of Captain Beefheart at least
if you remember musicians of the 1970s, and that's kind of weird.
Also do you think that you could become a famous musician today with a name like Captain Beefheart?
I think not.
A half cup or 118 milliliters of honey, one or two leeks, a few juniper berries.
Juniper berries that you buy at the store are usually dried so you want to grind those up into a powder,
and Daniel and Hanna recommend also using lingonberry, which I love lingonberry but they're very hard to find fresh
or even freeze-dried here in Southern California during this time of year.
They're usually done preserved with a bunch of sugar added so that kind of defeats the purpose
so I'm not going to be using them.
And a few slices of European style bacon.
The bacon's going to help to keep the meat from drying out too much.
Another popular method in the Middle Ages was called barding and that's
where you wrapped it in Shakespeare.
No it's where you would wrap the whole meat in bacon, something that we still do today,
and that also keeps it from drying out.
And you can learn about other wonderful Medieval cooking techniques and one of my favorite courses
on The Great Courses Plus: Cooking Across the Ages
It is a course that I repeat over and over again especially when I'm doing research.
It's filled with great inspiration and besides the fact that it has excellent history
it has the charm, wit, and genius of the great Ken Albala, one of my food history heroes,
and being an on-demand video learning service the Great Courses Plus really holds all of their lectures to that high standard.
World-class teachers walking you through pretty much any subject that you can think of.
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and history of course, to philosophy, travel, nature and even investing.
So if like me you have a lifelong love of learning you can start your free trial today by clicking the link in the
description the greatcoursesplus.com/tastinghistory.
Now let us dive into the heart of our episode.
So take your heart- by the way every time I even touched that heart
all I could think of was the guy from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Kalima! Kalima!
It's very disturbing.
And then cut the fat from the top.
And it's not just fat. It's also like the aorta and all those tubes at the top that you don't really want to eat.
There is some fat in the heart but very, very little and what there is, is waxy and not really something that you want to eat.
So just slice that off and add in bacon instead.
Then slice it down the side and open it up cutting out any large heart strings.
Yes, there are heart strings that is a real thing.
There are all sorts of little connective tissue bits in there and you can leave some but you'll know
which ones to take out because they just don't look like they should be eaten.
Also you want to run this under some cold water when you're done with that just to make sure that you're getting
everything out.
Then chop up your leeks and chop up your bacon, and put them into a bowl together
along with your ground juniper berries.
Then mix in about two-thirds of the honey,
we'll save the rest of the honey for basting the heart while it is roasting. Now you might have too much stuffing
and that is okay because it really depends on the size of your leek and and the size of your heart,
so don't worry if you have too much but go ahead and stuff the heart with as much mixture as you can.
Now how you cook this is really up to you. Later on we're going to listen to a story from
one of the sagas where they roast a heart on a spit, so that's the definite way to go if you can.
I don't have that here in my kitchen so I am roasting mine in the oven.
I set my oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit or 150 Celsius.
I did wrap mine around a skewer just because it is going to be easier to handle while basting.
Then with some twine, tie the heart up tight
and baste in honey before setting it in the oven on a roasting pan.
Now you're going to cook this for about 45 minutes a pound, but I really encourage you to use a thermometer
to stick in there and make sure that the meat has gotten to 160 degrees Fahrenheit
or 71 Celsius before taking it out of the oven.
Now while our heart roasts, I think it's a good time to re-taste our mead.
It has a lot of sediment at the bottom which I'm going to try not to get too much of,
but let's see here...
Oh so fizzy!
All right.
It is so clear.
So if you remember before it was it was very foggy and now it's perfectly clear.
So something has changed. It's also a lot more effervescent
than it was six months ago.
Let's give this a taste.
Hmm!
That is, it's actually really quite alcoholic.
It's not sweet,
there's a little sweetness to it but I mean last time it was like drinking honey water.
This is really good, maybe I should become a mead maker.
Is that a good career choice? I don't know.
Yes I think it would be. Meadmaker, maker of mead.
Max, the meadmaker.
Anyway if you haven't seen the first episode I will put a link in the description,
probably up here to where you can watch me actually make the mead and
taste it for the first time. This is also a good time to make sure that you have
subscribed to tasting history and go ahead and hit the Like button while you're down there,
really does a lot for the channel and that way you won't miss any future tastings of mead. Though I
think next time it's going to be Babylonian beer because this summer I want to make Babylonian
or Sumerian beer actually.
Anyway all of that done, let's get into some history.
Kind of.
So today's history is interesting because there is a kernel of history in it, but what we're going to
be talking about is actually the myth that kind of wraps around that kernel and sometimes it's
hard to tell what is real and what is not, what is, what has been made up and that that happens a
lot even in the mead video that I did six months ago. I talked about how the term honeymoon came
from the practice of after a Saxon wedding a month or a moon's worth of mead was was consumed that
actually happened or something like it happened, but the term honeymoon didn't arise until much
later and it was actually something that the story it was something that the Victorians just
made up, something that they were constantly doing and now we call that invented tradition i.e
a lie that someone just made up that stuck around until it just became accepted as fact.
It's just how it goes and we like to think that you know making up myths is something that was
done long, long ago but it's not. The Victorians did it, we're still doing it today but what
we're talking about today it did come from long, long ago.
See the recipe that I'm making today,
the talk about the honeyed hearts and made from hawks and everything that comes from a story
mentioned in The Poetic Edda. It's also mentioned in the Völsunga Saga or the Saga of the Volksungs
and one would assume that it's pure myth but it's not because the person who's having the dream in
the story is named King Atli who history knows as Attila the Hun who is a very real person,
just ask the Romans.
See the Völsunga Saga is one of the heroic legends of the Germanic people that
lived in southern Scandinavia and modern day Germany and Poland in that kind of area, and
during the twilight years of the Roman Empire they were butted up against the lands of the
Huns much of which is now like modern-day Hungary. That's where the term comes from and
several of the characters in the saga are based on real historical figures and the Germanic and
Scandinavian people loved historical fan fiction and they would take these real characters and put
them into new and kind of crazy situations. It's like the sixth century equivalent of
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
Well in this saga there are actually two references to the eating of hearts.
The first is King Atlee or Attila the Hun who has a dream of eating honeyed hawk hearts
but then his wife Gudrun who is also based on a real person comes to him and says it's actually
not hawks...
The hearts of thy sons hast thou eaten sword dealer,
all bloody with death drenched with honey.
Yeah she killed his sons and then fed them to him and then she kills him,
and then she burns the hall with him and everyone else in it just pretty much killing that whole part of the story off,
but it's actually the other story of heart eating in the saga that iI really love,
and partly it's because it's portrayed in one of Wagner's operas in the ring cycle, in the opera
Siegfried which I really enjoy. These are the operas with Ride of the Valkyrie which everybody knows
as well as Brünnhilde who is often depicted as having a winged or a horned helmet though that
came from a costume designer at the end of the 1800s. Vikings probably never wore horns on their helmets.
There's a lot of stuff about the vikings that is not true that kind of arose around that
time including the fact that viking was more of a profession.
So the Viking Age is a time period, viking was a profession.
It means raider or pirate so not everyone at the time was a viking.
It'd be like if in a thousand years today is remembered mostly for banking and we are living in the banking age,
though that doesn't make us all bankers. Anyway it's just a pet peeve of mine,
back to the story.
So this is the story of Sigurd one of the great heroes of Germanic legend
and he had a sort of stepfather who was a dwarf named Regin, and Regin asked Sigurd
to kill his brother Fáfnir because when Regin and Fáfnir's father died leaving a bunch of of
gold and treasure to them Fáfnir took it all for himself. The only thing is Fáfnir who was a dwarf
somehow turned himself into what at this point is described as a snake. So Siguard and Regin go to
find Fáfnir. Fáfnir leaves his lair once a day to go get a drink at the edge of a lake but on the
path Sigurd notices that it includes a cliff with a 30 fathom or about 180 foot drop and he's like
I thought you said this was a snake, and Regin's like well it's a big snake
but you're brave, you got this.
Just go dig a little pit along the path and then when Fáfnir goes over just stick
him with your sword, you're good to go. And then Regin leaves.
So Sigurd is digging this pit when an old man with one eye walks up to him and says Sigurd
"You in danger girl."
Fáfnir is not a snake, he is a dragon and when you stab him his blood will come out and it will burn you alive, so
dig some pits around you so that when you stab him the blood goes in there. I don't really see how
physically that's going to work unless he stabs him with an umbrella and the blood like goes
over the umbrella, I don't know. Anyway the guy who might have been Odin, it's really unclear,
he leaves but he makes all of the pits and lies in wait and soon Fáfnir comes a-crawling and it's said
that he's so large that the ground shakes with each step and that he spews venom in front of
him the entire time, not a snake,
but Sigurd who is famously afraid of nothing stabs him with his sword and delivers a fatal blow.
Fatal but not immediate. In fact they have quite the dialogue.
In the opera Siegfried who is Sigmund, changed his name for some reason, they have a 10 minute duet
so they do like the chit chat and what they talk about is Sigmund or Siegfried's name.
whose son thou art? who is Fáfnir's blood thy bright blade reddened and struck thy sword to my heart?
And Sigurd like I don't have a name or a dad or a mom. And it's because at the time it was thought
that a dying man or dragon's last breath could be a curse but he had to know the name of the person that he was cursing.
So if Sigurd didn't tell him his name, no curse
but then Fáfnir asks again and Sigurd like gives it all up.
He's like Sigurd is my name killing dragon's my game my dad is Sgmund,
my mother's maiden name is blah blah blah, do you want my blood type whatever he gives
it all up with no explanation. It's kind of weird.
So as you might expect Fáfnir says
I counsel a good heed my speech. And ride thou homeward hence; for that same gold which I have owned shall now be thy bane as well.
So he curses Sigurd, he curses the treasure and then the dragon dies
and then Regin the little dwarf comes back and is like hey give me some of that sweet, sweet dragon blood,
and he drinks his brother's blood and then he says
"Sit now, Sigurd, for sleep will I,
roast Fáfnir's heart on the fire; for all his heart shall eaten be, since deep of blood i have drunk."
So Sigurd puts the heart on the spit and roasts it.
Then "When he thought that it was fully cooked, and
the blood foamed out of the heart then he tried it with his finger to see whether it was fully cooked
he burned his finger and put it in his mouth but when Fáfnir's heart's blood touched his tongue.
he understood the speech of birds."
Logical he could ,understand birds after drinkng the blood
makes sense and the birds around him happen to be really, really smart.
"There sits Sigurd sprinkled with blood,
and Fáfnir's heart with fire he cooks; there Regin lies, and plans he lays
the youth to betray who trusts him well another said let him smite the head from off him then
and be only lord of all that gold."
So basically they say that Regin the dwarf is going to kill
you as well so you should cut off his head before he wakes up and on the advice of woodpeckers
he does just that cuts the dwarves head off and eats the rest of the dragon heart
himself it imbues him with so much courage that he then goes off to fight his next adventure
and that is why at a feast during the viking age it was customary to give the heart
to the king or whoever the guest of honor was, so that it would imbue them with the characteristics
of whatever animal had given their life which really makes me wish that I had a dragon heart
instead of a pig heart. Oink oink. Now while your heart roasts make sure to baste it every 10 to 15
minutes with honey, that way you'll have a nice sweet heart, and once it hits 160 Fahrenheit or 71
Celsius take it out of the oven and let it sit for about 10 minutes, and then it's ready to serve.
And here we are roasted heart of the Viking Age.
I'm going to slice myself a piece off here.
Heart is not for me. I don't have the stomach for heart it turns out.
I mean I ate it.
The flavor actually-
it's not for me.
It's very honeyed but the flavor is not my issue, it's the texture.
It's so firm. It's so like-
because there's no fat like in the actual meat it's just so-
it's not rubbery.
It's not for me. Let's just say that.
That said I think that the honey and the leek and all of the the filling would be wonderful in any other meat.
Heart just isn't for- it's not- it's not my bag.
Hm yeah, but that's okay.
I don't have to enjoy everything that I make here on the channel. That's part of the fun.
I do look forward to making more recipes from 'An Early Meal.'
Most of them I think are right up my alley. I don't know why I went with the heart for the first one,
probably not my- not my best decision but you know what it was interesting.
Now next week kicks off an entire month, or four weeks rather, of ancient Roman recipes so I'm really,
really excited about that so make sure to subscribe and follow me on Instagram:tastinghistorywithmaxmiller
and check out the link in the description for your free trial
of The Great Courses Plus and I will see you next time on Tasting History.