- Do you, do you know what these are?
Capezzoli di Venere. Nipples of Venus.
They're Roman chestnuts in brandied sugar. Try one.
- [Woman] They're wonderful.
- Hey there folks.
Welcome to a very special episode of "Binging with Babish"
where I'm joined by Max Miller of "Tasting History."
Thank you so much for coming on, man.
- Thanks for having me. So excited to be here.
- So what are we making today?
- Today we are making Capezzoli di Venere.
- [Andy] What the hell is that?
- Nipples of Venus.
- Nipples of Venus. From "Amadeus."
- [Max] From "Amadeus."
- One of my favorite movies.
- I have seen it so many times.
I practically have it memorized.
It's one of my favorites filled with historical characters,
historical inaccuracies sometimes.
But overall it's just a wonderful portrait
of those characters and of the time period
and of the music and, in some cases, of the food.
- Absolutely. Delicious looking movie.
Especially the Nipples of Venus.
Which are? What are the Nipples of Venus?
- So the Nipples of Venus from that time period,
we don't really know what was in it.
There aren't any recipes from the 18th century.
Probably a marzipan-based confection.
Salieri was known to have quite sweet tooth,
But in the movie it's shown it's, it's very clear
But in the movie, it's shown,
it's very clear that they're covered
in like a white chocolate. - Yeah.
- White chocolate didn't really exist at that time.
- Salacious. - [Max] I know.
But that's okay because we're gonna make it
with a white chocolate anyway
because the goal here is to make it look like
the movie version of the Nipples of Venus.
- We'll go into them.
- So I believe in the movie,
Salieri says that they are brandied chestnuts,
and basically that's what we're gonna be doing.
So it's chestnuts with brandy and sugar and butter
just made into a wonderfully sweet truffle.
And then that's covered with the white chocolate
with just a dot of dark chocolate for the nipple.
- Now that's a nipple we can all suck on.
So first thing we gotta do
is make the brandied chestnut filling, right?
- Yes. - So what are we doing there?
- Super easy. Okay, just take the chestnuts.
- Just take the chestnuts - And we we blend them.
You could chop them really, really fine.
But really you're looking for a mush.
- Yeah. - Because you wanna make it
as smooth as possible so that when you do put
that white chocolate on top,
it's nice and smooth and you don't have lumpy boobs.
- So...
So, okay, let me grab the food processor.
- [Max] All right.
- I should point out just to those curious
that's this particular make and model
of food processor did not exist back then.
And anything else going in here?
- At the moment, no. - Oh, just, okay.
- So just- - Mush.
- Let's just blitz them to death.
Get them as smooth as possible.
- [Andy] Nope. Here we go.
See, that was period accurate.
That's what would've happened.
- No electricity. - Yeah.
(food processor whirring)
- [Max] I think that's probably good.
- [Andy] Yeah, okay.
Yeah, that'll be a mush. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I love chestnuts.
Tastes just like chestnuts. It's crazy.
- Then we should actually probably melt the chocolate
'cause it does need to have time to cool.
- Alright, so I'm gonna get this melting.
That probably won't be compelling content.
So we'll see you guys in a bit.
So okay, this guy needs to cool off before we add them
to the chestnuts.
- So then we can start creaming together
the butter and sugar
- [Andy] Creaming together the butter and sugar,
likewise, something we're gonna use a machine for.
- Yeah, so we'll start with the butter and the sugar,
and then we can actually just mix everything else together.
- [Andy] I wonder how they would've done this
back in the day.
- By hand, with a birch whisk.
- Wow, that was accurate and expensive looking.
- [Max] There it is. That's probably good.
- Yeah? - [Max] Yeah.
- [Andy] All right.
We got some nice fluffy sugar and butter.
- Let's add in the chestnuts first.
- [Andy] Let's do it.
- And then we'll add in all the liquids.
We can do the salt, the vanilla, and the brandy.
- Little bit of booze in a sweet is so nice.
Cheerful. - Wonderful.
- Like you're not getting drunk off these things.
It's like a quarter of a teaspoon in each one,
but like just enough to get a little bite.
- And it is so easy to overdo it though.
And then they become like boozy.
- Yeah, if you're eating these and they're burning,
you did it wrong. - Yeah.
- If you're eating nipples and they're burning,
you're doing it too hard.
- [Max] There's a cream for that.
- [Andy] And now chocolate to this?
I can't wait to eat this by the spoonful.
- [Max] Right?
Well, and honestly, if you don't like white chocolate,
this is the end of your process.
- And you know who likes white chocolate? Nobody.
- Oh, I like white chocolate.
- You like white chocolate?
- I do like white chocolate.
- You mean you like hardened cocoa butter?
- Yeah.
- Should we try it?
- Let's do it.
Just enough booze.
- Just enough booze where it's just like, it's just present.
- Not too sweet. That is very period appropriate.
'Cause if you look at desserts in the 1700s,
they're never as sweet as we're used to today.
So then we just,
we scoop these and make them into little balls.
But they can have a flat bottom.
All right. - [Andy] Yeah
Those, those look like boobs.
What other boob-shaped foods are there
that are like intentionally?
No, I guess there are none. That's a dumb question.
- No, there are a ton. - What?
- There's actually, it was like a really popular thing
back in, going all the way back to the Middle Ages,
but especially in the 18th, 19th century
to have breast and phallic-shaped foods.
Then they're often named after like saints,
like the Breasts of Saint Cecilia.
I don't know that that's one of them.
But all over Italy and France and Germany, Spain,
they had those and other even more grotesque things
like- - [Andy] Tell me.
- Nun's Farts or Farts of a Whore.
- Oh. - Yeah.
- What are Farts of a Whore? What are Nun's Farts?
Tell me everything.
- So these were similar to a profiterole.
It's like a puff of air trapped inside of pastry.
- [Andy] Oh, see, that's clever.
- And depending on what they put with these,
then you've got the Nun's Farts.
- Oh man.
- People in the past were nasty.
I'm just saying. - I was about to say.
People think that this is like a nasty time to be alive.
No, people were nasty always.
- Always nasty. - We're always gross.
Okay, so we have our, what would you call these?
- Breasts of Venus. - Breasts and Venus.
We're gonna turn them into nipples.
Freezer? Freezer, okay. - Yeah.
- So Kendall was kind enough to melt this for us.
- [Max] Lovely. - [Andy] To a temperature of,
it's now at like 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
So we want to bring it down,
take it down a notch to our level
by adding some seed chocolate.
Yeah, we're gonna temper it. That's how you...
Click the link here
if you want to see how to temper chocolate.
I don't time to show you right now.
- [Max] And the only thing is if you don't get it tempered,
it still works. Yeah.
- They're just not as pretty.
They're like matte nipples
rather than shining, glossy nipples.
- You want shiny, glossy nipples.
- Right. A dull nipple tempted no one.
- [Andy] Okay, let's start dropping them in.
Let's do this.
I didn't think this through.
It's gonna be hard for me to put these over here.
- [Max] And figuring out now what the bottom is.
- [Andy] Yeah, yeah. You lose track of it in there.
My boobs are not the cleanest and nicest,
but hey, that's how I like them.
These look like they did in the movie though.
They weren't like perfect in the movie.
- They were not perfect in the movie.
- And I am above, I'm about accuracy above all else so.
- Exactly. - That's why we did it.
That's why they look this way.
And you can't prove it otherwise.
- [Max] Looks good. That looks good.
- [Andy] There we go.
- [Max] All of those.
- [Andy] I'm calling it, that's plenty of boobs.
Sorry. There you go.
Now we need to put nipples on them.
- [Max] Yes. - [Andy] Little dark nipples.
Bigger nipples or smaller nipples?
- Bigger nipples. - All right.
- Like dinner plates. (Andy groans)
Sorry.
Let's try one. This one's the least beautiful so.
- [Andy] Yeah, let's start, we need practice.
Where's my ugliest titties?
That is hard to nail.
There we go.
That's my shining boob.
Oh, I'm very proud of these boobs.
I wasn't before, but now they've come home to roost.
All right, Nipples of Venus. - [Max] Nipples of Venus.
- Shall we try one?
- We shall.
- [Andy] I'm gonna go ahead and eat this
as unprovocatively as possible.
And I'm serious. No, don't zoom in. I'm not gonna do it.
- That's delightful. - [Max] It is. They're rich.
- And it tastes hundreds of years old.
This tastes like history, I swear to God.
- Tasting history. It's all about, it's what it's all about.
- Check out "Tasting History" on YouTube.
Even though I'm sure you already do.
I'm sure you guys are already subscribed there, right guys?
- I hope. - Yes.
Well, I'm out of nipple puns
so we should probably bring this to an end.
Max, thank you so much for coming through
and showing me how to make- - [Max] Thank you.
- [Andy] Said Nipples of Venus.
- [Max] It was fun.
- Go check out "Tasting History with Max Miller"
on YouTube and...
- Watch "Amadeus."
- And watch "Amadeus." Yeah, no, it's a great movie.
That's it. Bang, bang.
- [Brad] No one's gonna eat a nipple provocatively? No one?
- [Kendall] I was also wondering the same thing.
- Here you go, Brad.
I don't wanna. - [Brad] Come on.
- I don't wanna. - [Brad] Come on.
The people want it.
There you go.
(classical music)