Tree Goat posted:

good post

Squalid posted:

that post reminds of of this youtube channel which recreates 18th century recipes:

Squalid posted:

The biggest limitation in their cooking seems to be controlling temperature, which must have been a real pain in the rear end before modern precision stoves and ovens.

System Metternich posted:

The Viennese bought their food either at bakeries, street market stalls, specialised or general storefronts or at the many various farmer's markets, most of which were held weekly or even twice a week.

Kurtofan posted:

france has disputes with suriname over guiana jungle borders i think

System Metternich posted:

Warning: below follows a loooong post that concerns itself with the diet of early modern inhabitants of Vienna, which is something I know about and which seems to come up in discussion every now and again. Vienna was recognised as being extraordinary in this regard already by the people living back then, but I think that it nevertheless could serve to show that "early modern god botherers" probably were rarer than one might think.


Kitchen scene in Vienna, 1787

18th century Vienna was super catholic with e.g. 31 monasteries with more than 1,400 religious living there in 1723 when the entire city had 150-200,000 people etc., daily processions, thousands of Masses read every day etc., that sort of thing. They weren't "god botherers" who only ate bland food to showcase their holiness, though - quite the contrary actually. Early modern descriptions of the city repeatedly talk about how much food the Viennese consume, and how extraordinary it was in terms of variety and quality. The baroque preacher Abraham a Sancta Clara called his contemporaries "idolatrous servants of their own belly", and Johann Basilius Küchelbecker, an author from what is today Thuringia, writes about the city that


Which in 1789 is quoted and confirmed by Friedrich Nicolai, a Berlin-based travelogue writer:


Nicolai claims that the Viennese ate up to 25% more beef than the people of Berlin or London, not counting the vast amount of game and poultry they supposedly consumed as well. Nicolai's claims are hard to confirm in detail, and he overlooked the simple fact that the enormous amount of oxen reared in nearby Hungary naturally made beef much more affordable than it was elsewhere, but we nevertheless know that early modern Viennese did indeed eat and drink a lot, and this high consumption wasn't just restricted to beef or the financially solvent upper classes, either.

By the middle of the 18th century, the average Viennese consumed about 154 pounds of meat, poultry and fish; by 1784 this number had grown to 190. While the consumption of wine did slowly decrease during the 18th century, the rising beer consumption made up for that. While in 1730 about 225 litres of wine and beer were consumed per capita and year, this number had risen to 267 fifty years later. Even the inhabitants of the municipal poorhouse were supplied with 130-165 litres of wine a year during the early 17th century! Fish was especially during Lent and other fasting days (until the calendar reforms enforced in the latter hald of the 18th century, those fasting days may have amounted to more than a full third of the year, even though early modern people proved quite inventive in finding loopholes or getting themselves official dispensations. Late 18th-century Vienna probably saw a fish consumption of up to five pounds per capita and year.

The high consumption of course meant that an enormous amount of foodstuffs had to be transported to the city every day. Johann Pezzl writes during the 1780s that:



The so-called "New Market" in Vienna, 1724

The great variety of food that potentially formed part of a meal in early modern Vienna can also be reconstructed by examining extant menus of inns. This covers at least those in the population who could afford going to such localities. Their number probably wasn’t that small, though, seeing as meals with “four bowls” (i.e. four courses) could be ordered at the low price of six kreutzers as late as 1780s Vienna. Forty years earlier, a six-course meal ran for only ten kreutzers. A mason journeyman could even afford to eat out several times a week, seeing as their average daily wage was at about 24-27 kreutzers during summer. A seven-kreutzer meal that was offered in 1745 consisted of a soup, beef with radish and cucumbers, a serving of vegetables and cured or roasted meat. During fasting days, fish and pastries replaced the meat courses. The 24-kreutzer meal added sauces, sausages, pastries, an additional course of game or crabs and a course of veal, lamb, pork or roasted poultry, each accompanied by a salad.

As luxury goods slowly became more widespread even outside of the Imperial court, many businesses sprung up that dealt with processing and sale of sugar, coffee, tobacco and similar products. The first known Viennese sugar-maker appears in a 1519 document; he and his colleagues at first supplied mostly the court. As shown by the average sugar consumption, sweets and sweetened drinks became increasingly popular by the last quarter of the 18th century. In 1770, about 4.4 pounds of sugar were consumed per capita and per year; by 1783, this number had risen to an astounding eleven pounds! Along with sugar came the consumption of coffee, tea and ice cream, all of which was mostly offered in coffee houses.

The first Viennese coffee makers came from Armenia. In 1685, a certain John Diodato received the permission to “prepare coffee, tea and Scherbet (=sorbet)”. In 1736 there were already 37 coffee houses, and by 1790 this number had risen to 70.

The most important food however was bread, and there was an enormous amount of bakeries and small market stalls or stores that sold it, as well as bread roll and occasionally more expensive goods like pretzels, sweet pastries and an early form of the croissant as well. The so-called Bratlbräter were highly popular; they operated at small market stalls throughout the city where they sold cured or roasted meat and sausages. They and the bakeries were basically the early modern Viennese version of street food.


A street vendor offering Italian salami, c.1775

The Viennese bought their food either at bakeries, street market stalls, specialised or general storefronts or at the many various farmer's markets, most of which were held weekly or even twice a week. In addition to all that there was a ton of mostly unlicensed street vendors who basically sold stuff out of their backpack. Even though they were unlicensed, the government tended to go easy on them because they formed an important part of the everyday supply with food and other assorted goods. Most of them seem to have been women, and it can't have been too unpopular a job either, because we have sources telling us that young people actually preferred this line of work over a job in the weaving mills (which also might tell you something about the quality of life and pay you might expect to get by working there).


A street vendor selling pretzels, c.1775

I already mentioned that people got quite creative for Lent. Everybody knows about beavers being counted as fish, but it's fascinating to see how much the Viennese back then got out of cooking with fish. They had a lot to choose from; a 1548 poem lists 52 different kinds of fish you could get at the city's largest fish market. Fish that hadn't been sold the day they got caught had to get their fins removed so that everybody could easily recognise them, and the fish vendors were legally obliged to stand all the time and not wear coats or caps, so that they would speed up the sale of their easily spoilable goods.

The Viennese cuisine during fasting times was pretty inventive; there were sausages made from fish and fake beef broth made from fish heads. A 1787 Viennese cookbook mentions chocolate soup (roux, milk, cinnamon, chocolate, butter) as a food for lent and gives a fasting day recipe consisting out of different fish, crabs and crab eggs, pistachioes, almonds, lemon peel, ginger, pepper, cloves, laurel, rosemary, thyme, vinegar, wine and saffron - it's not like people had to starve during the many, many fasting days! In addition to fish, people also ate increased amounts of crabs, oysters, mussels, snails and frogs and of course stuff like beaver and otter which also counted as fish.


A "snail woman" offering her wares, c. 1775

Re: the available herbs and spices back then, maybe it would be interesting to look at what the aforementioned cookbook lists as possible ingredients for each month of the year:

December, January, February: dried fruits, cabbage, turnips, beetroors, celery, radish, potatoes and other easily storable vegetables. It's important to note that, while they were known from the 16th century on, potatoes only became a fixed part of the everyday diet from the late 18th century onwards. Available greens were watercress and winter salads. The winter saw a ton of meat, however: beef, mutton, pork, venison, rabbit and poultry, but also herring, buckling, carp, tench, eel, salmon and otter for fasting times.

March: In addition to what we have during the winter the cookbook now mentions a ton of various salads and herbs that became available by then.

April: Pork, rabbit, poultry and lamb were easily available, even though venison grew more rare. The cookbook mentions eel, whiting and sturgeon and reminds the reader that the supply of vegetables and greens grew even more diverse, with lettuce, radish and cucumbers, but also aniseed and artichokes which became widely popular from the early 18th century onwards.

During the summer months there was of course a ton of fruit both from Austria and other countries: strawberries, cherries, apricots, pears, grapes, apples, lemons, melons and pears. During July there was more fish than meat available at the markets, whereas August saw a lot of veal and sucklings on offer.

September: Venison and other game makes a reappearance on the menu, also lots of birds like snipes, thrushes, fieldfares, grouses and larks. There was still lots of fish on sale.

November: Fish becomes more hard to get. Most Viennese knew to only buy cured or smoked meat and sausages, because fresh meat tended to not be very good from now on.

Again: Vienna wasn't representative for the early modern era, and even back then people knew this too. Otoh I don't believe that they were too much out of the ordinary, and that depending on local supply, time of the year and cultural/religious mores there was quite a lot to buy and consume for people back then. In Vienna a surprising amount of sugar was consumed every year, and I don't think that this wasn't the case elsewhere. Exotic spices were expensive and relatively rare, but local cuisine offered a ton of herbs and sauces as condiments that people loved to use to "spice up" their meals, and at least in Vienna a sizeable part of the city could afford to eat out several times a week and consume what we would consider today quite an extravagant meal, although the average portion size was probably quite a bit smaller than it is today.

Squalid posted:

They have a lot of good videos, though I picked this one because it used to be titled "Orange Fool," and made a bunch of people insanely mad who thought it was a secret jibe at Donald Trump.

Milo and POTUS posted:

lmfao

System Metternich posted:

Food chat

Kurtofan posted:

france has disputes with suriname over guiana jungle borders i think

The creator of the map posted:

Here are the multilingual anthems that are not mentioned in the map: Switzerland: “When in morning-red you come from there, I see you in an ocean of light” (German), “On our mountains, when the the sun announces a shiny awakening” (French), “When bright dawn gilds the morning” (Italian), “In the dawn of tomorrow the human being greets you” (Romansh).

Belgium: “Noble Belgium, O dear mother” (French), “O dear Belgium, O holy land of fathers” (Dutch), “O dear country, O Belgium’s soil”.

There are a few odd things to notice. Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and San Marino are the only countries in the world that have an anthem without official lyrics.

The Hymn to Liberty—a poem written by Dionysios Solomos—is not only the national anthem of Greece but also the national anthem of Cyprus (imagine the confusion after a Greece–Cyprus football match).

The Dutch anthem literally refers to “German blood”, but it is important to understand the historical context. The original lyrics were composed in the 16th century, when the Netherlands was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the expression refers to the Germanic nations in general, not to Germany in the modern sense of the word.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

This goes for all of Europe except south-eastern Ukraine and the parts that are still hella forested.

Jippa posted:

I think the difference is that the UK is an island. We built loads of huge ships. Then later in WW2 every single bit of spare land that could be had to be farmed because of the u boat blockades etc. It was like a medieval siege of a castle on a national level.

They are trying to re forest areas but it's not the same really. I love huge ancient forests there is some thing about them that is magical.

System Metternich posted:

Glad you guys liked it!




Andorra

Orange Devil posted:

loving lol at Belorussia.

Jippa posted:

I think the difference is that the UK is an island. We built loads of huge ships. Then later in WW2 every single bit of spare land that could be had to be farmed because of the u boat blockades etc. It was like a medieval siege of a castle on a national level.

They are trying to re forest areas but it's not the same really. I love huge ancient forests there is some thing about them that is magical.

System Metternich posted:

Glad you guys liked it!




Andorra

ekuNNN posted:

Saladman posted:

Yeah, also "disputes" is a weird way of phrasing it. Really there should be differentiation in the colors for "disputes where anyone gives a poo poo" and "totally inconsequential like whether a border runs through a mountain summit or 1 inch to the south of the mountain's summit".

It seems like a lot of the disputes are for river or lake borders where it's not clear whether the thalweg is the marker or the center is the marker like in Lake Malawi, Lake Constance, the Chobe river, or the Shatt el Arab. It'd be interesting to see that map re-colored with "land disputes" versus "water disputes".



Although I guess relatively inconsequential things like that can be more relevant as a casus belli than a 'real' border dispute like the Golan Heights (e.g. Shatt el Arab).

Also while thinking about this, I thought Australia had a border dispute with East Timor, but apparently that was solved two months ago ( http://www.news.com.au/finance/econ...7abddd709dfd510 )

mandatory lesbian posted:

I wonder how many disputes like that are because of some event that altered a rivers course or drained a lake, it can't be zero right?

Xelkelvos posted:

You can sorta see the same thing in the US with the Great Plains and the Midwest being essentially bereft of trees compared to the South or New England. The reasoning is probably similar at least in the Midwest's case.

System Metternich posted:

words about food

Critias, 111 posted:

was unimpaired, and for its mountains it had high arable hills, and in place of the “moorlands", as they are now called, it contained plains full of rich soil; and it had much forestland in its mountains, of which there are visible signs even to this day; for there are some mountains which now have nothing but food for bees, but they had trees no very long time ago, and the rafters from those felled there to roof the largest buildings are still sound. And besides, there were many lofty trees of cultivated species; and it produced boundless pasturage for flocks. Moreover, it was enriched by the yearly rains from Zeus, which were not lost to it, as now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea; but the soil; it had was deep, and therein it received the water, storing it up in the retentive loamy soil and by drawing off into the hollows from the heights the water that was there absorbed, it provided all the various districts with abundant supplies of springwaters and streams, whereof the shrines which still remain even now, at the spots where the fountains formerly existed, are signs which testify that our present description of the land is true.

SaltyJesus posted:

Compare and contrast with the defiance of:
(mediocre translation stolen from wiki)

"There lives, there lives the Slavic spirit,
It will live for ages!
In vain threatens the abyss of Hell
In vain the fire of thunder!
Let now everything above us
be blown away by the Bura.
The stone cracks, the oak breaks,
Let the earth quake!
We stand firm
like the big cliffs"

quote:

The sign of revenge has been given, he is tired of their bait;
With fire in the eye, in anger he jumps towards the enemy.
He tears, destroys, crushes, covers in blood and mud
And in victory grins over his enemy's trembling corpse.

quote:

Of our land Wallonia we are proud.
Her children are esteemed the world over.
Behold the triumph of her industry,
The grandeur of her arts!
Though our land be small, still her science
Surpasses that of many a populous nation
What we yearn for most is our freedom.
That is why we are proud to be Walloons!

System Metternich posted:

System Metternich posted:

Randandal posted:

Why is Norway missing data on so many maps?

Randandal posted:

Why is Norway missing data on so many maps?

Randandal posted:

Why is Norway missing data on so many maps?

Golbez posted:

It makes me happy that the map accurately represents the Zuiderzee/IJsselmeer conversion

System Metternich posted:

I couldn't find any sign that the project was founded by anyone else besides the EU, but I wouldn't exclude it either

System Metternich posted:

Glad you guys liked it!




Andorra