October 2026
Mammoth meat & the next cookbook
Dear Tastorians,
I want to share an update that I'll be announcing on the channel in the next month or so. After more than three years of work, the next Tasting History cookbook, A Recipe for Disaster, will soon be available for pre-order.
The last hurdle is choosing a cover. I think we're on our fifth round of concepts at this point? But once that's settled, I'll share all the links where you can pre-order.
The publisher is aiming for a late May release, which also means I'll get to head out on another book tour next summer! I loved the first book tour so much that we're planning to make this one even more widespread. So if I make it to your city, I can't wait to meet you.
This Tuesday, October 6 at 10:30 AM Pacific, I'm going to join the folks at BoardGameGeek to do a first playthrough of Tasting History: The Board Game.
A lot of people have wondered what it's going to be like and, while it's still a work in progress, this will give you an idea of what to expect. You can join the livestream or watch later at https://youtube.com/live/bBdz7diYj6o?feature=share
Now for an interesting story I came upon regarding a 1951 dinner of the Explorers Club with a menu that supposedly featured mammoth! Or did it?
Founded in 1904, the Explorers Club held annual black tie banquets in New York where members dined on all manner of exotic foods while swapping stories of that year's adventures. On January 13th, 1951, the event took place in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Roosevelt and featured a buffet of spider crab, bison steaks, cheese straws and "prehistoric meat," thought by many to be woolly mammoth thawed from the Alaskan permafrost.
This year, the dinner was a smorgasbord. Included on the menu was a hairy mammoth which was 250,000 years old. It had been intended to have as the main dish mammoth from the wilds of Alaska or wherever. But when they got around to quoting prices, they found that a main dish of hairy mammoth would be a little rich, even for their blood...
- The Courier-Journal (Saturday, January 27, 1951)
Mounting an expedition to secure enough mammoth meat for a main course would have come with a price of $495.74 per plate, nearly $6,500 today. Ultimately, the supposed mammoth meat, procured from the private stores of Reverend Bernard Hubbard, known as the Glacier Priest, was used only as stew meat; this was probably a good way to cook meat which had been frozen for a quarter of a million years.
For decades, the story persisted that members of the Explorers Club had actually eaten prehistoric meat that night... although even in 1951 no guest seemed entirely certain whether it was mammoth or giant ground sloth. But in 2016, a piece of the meat served, which had been preserved at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, underwent DNA testing. What was labeled not as mammoth, but as giant ground sloth, turned out to be the meat of a modern green sea turtle. It seems the organizers of the feast had pulled a fast one on their unsuspecting members.
And now for a few things I thought you might enjoy:
Colonel Colman of the Mustard Club - Colman's Mustard Advertising Song - Colonel Colman of the Mustard Club: This was a song Colman's Mustard used in their advertising in the early 20th century.
Inside the Vault: Italian Officers Mess Kit - The National WWII Museum shows off their Italian Officers Mess Kit.
Why a Language Map of the World is Impossible - The Map Men show why a Language Map of the world is impossible.
Last Month’s Videos
Serving it forth,
Max