September 29, 2026 • 39 mins
As summer finally mellows into Autumn, Ben, Noel, and Max could not be more excited about "soup weather". In today's episode, the guys explore the history of one of the most ingenious -- and, arguably, laziest -- inventions in culinary history. A dish with no set recipe, never emptied, and capable of cooking for years or decades at a time. This is the story of perpetual stew.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Let's give a big shout
out to our super producer, Max the Madman Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Max Brain Stew Williams. Remember Brain Stew, that Green Day song?
What an odd name for a song. Didn't even mention
Stew once.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You know, you're Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bullitt. And Noel,
you and I have been having some adventures recently. Max,
you're going to join Noel and I on a madcap
escapade pretty soon. And you know what really hit me
earlier this month, just a few days ago, you guys?
(01:07):
I walked out. It wasn't. incredibly hot and humid outside.
It was autumnal and it hit me. Noel, we might
be officially into soup weather.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
We're approaching it, Ben. Don't let it trick you, brother.
Still 80 something degrees today in Atlanta, but no, I'm
with you and I can't wait. Stew weather, sweater weather. Yes, indeed.
The autumn is upon us, or at least it's creeping up.
Halloween spooky season. We love it.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, something tasty this way comes. Now, as you know, folks,
we are all kind of foodies. We're fans of food,
and we have been astonished in past episodes by the deep, rich,
and at times ridiculous history of food. One of the
(01:58):
strangest things that we have encountered, thanks to our amazing
research associate, Wrenn, is the idea of a stew that
never ends.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It is the stew that never ends. The never-ending stew-ry.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Get it?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
The never-ending stew-ry?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Is stew-ry like the....
Speaker 2 (02:21):
The study of stew?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, you're in New York right now. I'm sure there's
a stewery next to a brewery. Oh, a stewery could
be a stew establishment, right?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah. So we know the following.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And big thanks to Zach Makes over on social media,
should thou sip. We know this. Quote, perpetual stew is
a dish that is cooked continuously, always simmering over heat.
with more liquid and ingredients added as needed to replenish
its volume. There are no required ingredients besides a liquid,
(02:56):
which helps it maintain a high temperature without burning. Also,
shout out to Food & Wine magazine.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, and I mean, I guess the question that immediately
comes to mind for me and probably a lot of
you out in the audience, is this sanitary? Is this legal? Okay,
that's another good one. And then you start to ask yourself, well,
maybe if it stays at a certain temperature, it kills
all the germs forever. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And then Wren hit us with another plot twist, folks.
She said, What does perpetual stew have to do with
Lizzie Borden?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Wait a minute.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Talk about a curveball. I know. I know.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
But here's our ad break. You know, Ben, I have
always aspired to become a tavern wench.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I think it's too late for me.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
No, of course not, man. I believe in you. I
have your back, as you know, to a cartoonish degree. Uh, we,
we have to say, uh, shout out to Tavern Witches. Uh,
you're going somewhere with that, Dole, because we all recognize
in the West, the fantasy, uh, trope of people going
(04:09):
to the inn. You see it in video games like
The Witcher, uh, Max and I love The Witcher. Uh,
you see it in, of course, Lord of the Rings
when the hobbits, uh, get to the town.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
They're running from the Wraiths.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
They're running from the Wraiths. You see it in Game
of Thrones, an adaptation of the brilliant novel series Song
of Ice and Fire.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
There was a real good tavern sequence in Night of
the Seven Kingdoms that was sort of an inciting incident
that led to the young secret prince being part of
the crew. The Traveler of Kati, of two.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, and if you.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Dunk and Egg.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Dunk and Egg, yes. And if you find yourself in
this wide world encountering maybe a small off-the-beaten-path bed and breakfast,
something like that, then you know that there's probably going
to be a limited menu. There are probably going to
be not too many customers there. And you probably also
(05:05):
will realize that fantasy tropes have kind of embellished things.
Those ale houses and taverns and inns of yesteryear, They
weren't just for drinking. They weren't just meaderies. They were also,
I love that term.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Meaderies. Yeah, meaderies. And meat markets.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes, sometimes uncomfortably so. But they were also, Noel, to
borrow your earlier phrase, they were steweries. They were salons.
They were cafes.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
It was the easiest thing to just kind of have on.
I get it. Logistically, it makes sense. You didn't have
to do much prep work other than just chop up
whatever you had laying around because this was certainly, you know,
these were often those types of joints. They didn't exactly
have a specialized, you know, prefix menu. But they might
come into some, you know, they had a little surplus
(05:55):
of carrots that they didn't need for feeding the horses.
They'd use them for feeding the people. Chop them up,
throw them in the pot. It's always there, hanging in
the hearth, always at a slow simmer. Yeah, this reminds
me of two things. The first is a funny story
from a fellow traveler, a friend of mine. He was
(06:16):
I'm not going to say the specific place, but he
was in a small town in a different part of
the world and he was hungry. And so he walked
into a place that he thought was an abandoned restaurant.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
He sat there. He said the service was horrible. They
didn't have a menu. Eventually, they just bought him, you know,
like some water or a beer and a pot of stew.
And he ate it. And when it came time to
pay the bill, the folks who gave him the stew
told him this was their house and not a restaurant.
(06:54):
They were just that nice. He had just walked in
to this place and they wouldn't, you know, turn away
a guest.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Well, that's nice. What is that? The, uh, the, the,
the God's hospitality, hospitality.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
There we are.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You've broken bread with me.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Uh, also shout out to scary stories to tell in
the dark, uh, the, or the old trope about stone soup.
That's a great one.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Ben, remember the episode of, are you afraid in the
dark about the soup that made you like terrified? It was, uh,
one of those Vink, Dr. Vink, Vink episodes. And he
basically ran like a weird tavern in the middle of
the woods and some Canadian teenager wandered into it. And
there was this soup that, uh, you'd eat it and
(07:39):
it would make you like hallucinate and see like your
worst fear.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Oh, I, I've got to check that out. I'm putting
it on the list and, uh, I'm going to watch
it at home though. I'm not going to go to
an ale house, a tavern or an inn. Well, I
might end up at a hotel for this, but, uh,
We know there's a quick differentiation, courtesy of Red. Ale
houses would serve your beer, your mead. Taverns apparently would
(08:05):
serve wine. Inns, however, would serve beer, wine, and hot meals.
This is where you would order the older equivalent of
bar food, like you're hanging out at an amazing bar.
dive bar or something, and you've got a bit of
a craving, right? A bit of a hole in your stomach.
(08:27):
So you look at their menu, you get, you know,
a bag of chips or you get a side of
fries and queso or whatever. In Britain, there's something called
the Plowman's Lunch. Do you remember this?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I don't think I know the Plowman's Lunch, but I
do know that Hunter's Stew is a thing in Polish cuisine,
which is probably similar to what you're talking about. Yeah,
Hunter's stew is, it can be a perpetual stew because
we know in days past, innkeepers, like you described earlier,
(09:01):
would just have a cauldron, a literal cauldron on the hearth.
And they would say, oh, we've got some carrots or, right,
we have some mushrooms. We might have gone big time.
We might have some pepper and just pour it in there.
and you would serve that to people if they wanted
(09:22):
food along with their mead. Also often referred to as potage, potage, potage.
I like that better. And it really was more of
a logistical concern because of the feudal system. Medieval societies
were organized into these clear social strata, you know, the upstairs,
downstairs of it all, with the king at the top, way, way,
way upstairs. Nobility and lords and clergymen next. Knights, of course,
(09:45):
a little bit below nobility. And then peasants. of course,
being the largest, poorest, and lowest of the classes. The
Lord answered to the king, but oversaw the daily lives
of his fiefdoms, the peasants, in town. Though the peasants
did grow the crops and do all the work to
keep those communities functioning, the Lord actually took a portion
(10:08):
of their crops and their earnings, and in some cases
could actually decide who a peasant might marry, or if
they were to be allowed to leave the community and
move to another village. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
So what we're telling you here is at most points
in this part of history, the majority of people did
not have what we would call human rights. They did
not have agency of transit. We're not going to get
into prima noctis tonight, but there's a reason.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That's the king's privilege, right?
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Right. There's a reason that Shibboleth exists. We know that
I love your setup here, Noel, because we know that
due to this feudal structure, if you are a serf,
if you are a peasant, if you are the majority
of the population, you live and die based on the harvest.
So if your crops don't yield enough food from the soil,
(11:06):
that means that you have not just nothing to sell,
you have nothing to eat. And this is why stew
is a catbird seat for folks.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
No, it's true. I mean, I understand. Stu, if I
was to think of myself as my aspirational role of
tavern wench, I would be surveying the contents of my
fridge and all the little things that were maybe just
on the edge of spoiling. Maybe, you know, what better
way to use those sort of slightly soft carrots than
(11:37):
throwing them in a pot where you can't really tell
anymore that they were.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
You know, on the edge of spoiling.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You can tell that both my co-host and I make
a lot of soup. I mean, look, and I'm not
saying I exclusively use soup for this purpose, but it
is a really good one because, or, you know, it's
almost like maybe using the avocado that's about to go
that ain't quite so pretty, but you throw it into
a smoothie and you'd never know. It's not non-hygienic. Just
nobody wants to necessarily look at it or eat the
(12:05):
brown bits, but it doesn't mean that it's like dangerous
or in any way like, you know, Bad for health. Contaminated.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Thank you. Yeah, yeah. And this is interesting because the
stew in question in our tavern wench innkeeper situation here,
the stew in question is not necessarily using water for
the peasantry of the time. This stew was using beer.
(12:34):
The basis, the liquid basis of the stew was, was
probably beer because it was just safer to drink.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, beer is a great additive to a good soup
or a stew or a braise.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I like cheese and beer, broccoli soup, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
It adds a really nice little kick to it. I'll
use beer in a chili. Chili is the ultimate stew
in a lot of ways. What is chili if not
sort of a stew?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, and an aspiration for cumin. Just like we're saying, folks,
these taverns relied on whatever was cheap, and available or leftover.
So you would go in the back garden and you
would collect parsley and sage and, you know, cousins of mint,
and you would throw that into the stew. People would
(13:20):
come to your tavern. You wouldn't have a menu. You
would just give them stew if they ordered it. And
if you go to like a fancier place, like the
kind of place the Aristos would go to, then you
would get increasingly cool cuts of meat with your stew.
It'd still be the same kind of basic stew, but
(13:42):
they would put in venison or veal, and then they
would add the fancy spices that a lot of peasantry
would never get a chance to taste.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Ben, I have to conjecture that some horse ended up
in there from time to time. Of course, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
A horse is a horse, of course, of course.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Of course, yeah, yeah. I mean, it depends on what's available,
and sometimes Especially after wartime, that would be dogs, maybe,
or cats.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Again, whatever's laying around. Whatever's around. I mean, you know,
you might have to put down a mare, you know,
and what are you going to do? Let that meat
go to waste? Hell no. I mean, as we mentioned,
I mean, these folks were kind of living hand to mouth, literally.
So you would definitely throw some of that, some of
those choicest bits of the horse into the stew.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah. And now, okay, so let's say I'm an innkeeper
and I'm doing my best to keep the medieval version
of Gordon Ramsay from coming into my restaurant and embarrassing me.
So I want to be efficient. That means I'm going
to save time. I'm going to serve a very simple menu.
(14:47):
Gordon loves that. We'll have the stew. We'll have bread.
And If it's available, we might have cheese. We might
have some older smoked meat. We simmer this stew 24
hours per day, seven days a week. And it makes
it easier for us as innkeepers and tavern wenches to
(15:13):
keep customers fed, which means we don't have extensive prep
work all the time, right? You just throw the stuff
in there. went into the cauldron when you have the stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, and I just want to point out too, um,
some of the best, you know, uh, masters of, of
soup and stewery, like ramen chefs, uh, they will simmer
their bone broths, you know, for sometimes days and days
at a time or however many it's definitely time is, uh,
often what makes the tenderest of, of meats and the
(15:46):
most savory and, uh, flavorful of broths. You know, if
I'm going to make a chili or a beef stew,
for example, I want to cook it low and slow
for a really, really long time. So this perpetual stew idea,
the more I think about it, the more I think
I'd try it.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Have you not?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
No, I'm not. Where's the best perpetual stew joint in
Atlanta or New York?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Let's get to it. There are some in the United States,
maybe not in Atlanta. You've nailed it there, Noel. Then
as now, people are working with what they have in
the most creative way possible. We know that over a
(16:29):
thousand years of the medieval period, there were seasons that
had a lot of rainfall. So if you go to
Johann Gutenberg University, you'll see the following. It's a little
bit of an involved quote, but it sets up the
rest of the story perfectly.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
The late Middle Ages were characterized by two distinct wet periods.
What's the stupid? It's not a part of the wet period.
In Central Europe in the 13th and 14th century, separated
by dry summer weather between 1300 and 1340. The increase
in summer rainfall between 1350 and 1370 is remarkable and
occurred exactly at the time when the plague broke out
(17:11):
and spread across the entire European continent. Yeah, you don't
want wet weather when there's plague going. That's gonna, it's
gonna aid in the spread of it. Right. You always
talk about people saying, you know, convalescing, uh, in dry climates,
you know, you definitely don't want to be sick, um,
or have a, have a communicable disease when the weather
(17:32):
is wetter.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And so this constant rain, which, you know,
sounds good for crops, this constant rain flooded the fields
and now the people working in the agricultural industries can't
really harvest those crops. So they're running out of wheat
and barley. If we're talking about the big floods during
(17:54):
this time period, livestock drowned or they got sick because
of that swampy standing water. They starved to death.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
People got swamp butt, foot rot.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, swamp butt, foot rot. Watch out for them.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And then you've got, of course, the plague, the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Insult to injury, man. Yeah, so now we don't, just
have a dearth of food, we have a shortage of
living people. So the food you can buy is at a.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Way higher price because there are way fewer people who
can make it.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The solution? Stew.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, stew. You had me at stew. It's, in fact,
a really, really great way to warm your weary bones
of a cold and rainy evening, especially if you're a
hut owner. A roof is made of thatch, for example,
and is not really doing a great job of keeping
that wet and cold out. You don't have to have bread.
(18:52):
It'd be nice, but not required. You know bread for dipping?
Throw it all in there. Put it in a bread bowl.
How do you feel about bread bowls, Ben? I think
they're a little extra, but I do enjoy one from
time to time.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, nice crusty bread bowl, especially if it's good bread.
Once a year, I'd say. On a cold night, I'll
take a bread bowl.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
There is an excellent Polish restaurant in Brooklyn called Karzma,
and they do these hot white borschts in a bread bowl,
and it's phenomenal. It's one of my favorites. It comes
with a hard-boiled egg in it and sausage and stuff,
and it's creamy. kind of pickly almost tasting soup. Because
(19:36):
typically people think of borscht as like a red, red, red,
cold beet soup, which is not my bag. But hot
white borscht is pretty fantastic, especially in a bread bowl.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I am on board with this. And you'll have to do,
can you text me the name of that restaurant?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Sure, we'll take you there myself one day. So it's
a fabulous spot. I'd love to go. Let's take Max too. And,
you know, this is operationally, objectively for people in this
time period, It is the worst time of their lives.
It's the worst time to be alive.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
There's rain. There's famine. Everyone you love is dying. The
nobility still kind of sucks. So what we see is
that disease and famine and privation are hitting every imaginable demographic.
The nobility is feeling the pinch as well. So The
(20:35):
surviving peasantry, the surviving majority of society is able to
gain bargaining power with these aristocrats that were pretty much
slave owners such that these peasants can go to the
rulers of the day and say, we want higher wages.
(20:56):
We need more land. We can have a revolution or
you can be cool. This overturned the feudal system. And
Stu was a part of it because Stu kept him going.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
How do you feel about the name Stu as a
short name for Stuart?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
I was thinking about that. I was thinking about that.
One of my favorite characters.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I think it's cute.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah. One of my favorite characters from a Stephen King
novel called The Stand is named Stuart Redman. And I
like Stu. I prefer Stu to Stuart.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I don't know why. Stu was the name of Tommy's
dad in Rugrats cartoon.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Stew pickles. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Stewie was the baby.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Dude, we need a stew in the crew.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
No, I'm thinking of Stewie Griffin. Oh, that's a different stew.
That's right. But a stew was the dad on Rugrats.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yes. And we'll go to the hill on that one, folks.
We also need a stew in the crew. And we
have to point out to the earlier question, where is
the best perpetual stew? It's pretty fascinating because you can
tell there's some parallel thinking here in a culinary milieu.
(22:07):
Perpetual stew is not unique to medieval European culture. Some
of the longest simmering extant stews can be found over
in Asia.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, again, like the ramen situation, that broth is a history.
of slow, slow, long simmers that really, I mean, it is,
if you're into cooking, you know that that is how
you get those flavors to come out, to truly get infused.
Time is everything when it comes to proper cooking.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yes, absolutely. And without being that unfortunate meme of a
Westerner who visits Japan and comes back performative, we can
tell you that the oldest continuously simmering soup as of September,
2026 comes from Japan. It's at a restaurant called Otafuku
(22:59):
and Otafuku serves a stew called Odin that they've been
cooking continually 24 hours a day, seven days a week
since 1945. Dude.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Okay. I'm going, uh, you gotta give me a text
me the name. Cause I think I mentioned on this
pod that I'm going to Japan in November, um, with my,
So I'm super down to try that, if only for
podcast reasons. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Did you?
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It was. I have not tried that one, but I have.
I'm an enthusiast.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
You've had some long soups.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Elderly soups.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I see.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
I've sipped some elderly soups. We know that. It's interesting, Noel,
because we know that this restaurant, their perpetual stew in 1916,
and they had an interruption due to World War II.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Oh, man. World War II always is messing up everyone's
perpetual stew and everything else. The next oldest continuous stew,
if you wish, can be enjoyed at a place called
Watana Panich, a family-run restaurant in Bangkok in Thailand. This
is a beef stew I was mentioning. It's been cooking
for more than 60 years. The main ingredients include, according
(24:18):
to NPR and the restaurant themselves, nearly a dozen Chinese
herbs plus garlic, cinnamon, black pepper, cilantro root, and 150
pounds of beef per day. Another culinary note is the
type of meat you use usually in beef stew, stew meat,
you really have to cook it for a really long
(24:40):
time at low heat for it to even be edible.
If you tried to just like, you know, give that
a quick pan sear, you're going to be chewing on
that bad boy for a long time. So the way
to break down the fibers in the meat is by slowly,
you know, cooking, cooking it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And astute, ridiculous historians, you heard what we said, 150
pounds of beef per day. So they're selling a lot
of stew.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
They're slinging some stew.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
But also we have to wonder if they're in on
a technicality because the owner's of Watana Paniche, they say
that they clean the stew pot nightly by removing most
of the stew and leaving a little bit in the
bottom to retain the flavor.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It's like the Olympic flame. You know, you got to
have a little bit of the original left to say
that it is perpetual. I'm intrigued, man. It's sort of
a weird flex at this point in history, I would argue.
You know, it's like, look what we're doing. Whereas back
in the olden times, the medieval times, it was a
little more of a product of necessity, right? Now it's like,
(25:45):
I don't think anybody has to do this anymore, but
it's an interesting tradition to carry on. But I think
I posed the million, at least $ 100 question at the
top of the show is like, is this safe?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah. Yeah, asterisk, caveat, fine print. It is safe if
it is cooked correctly. And a lot of it goes
down to the science of this. So You got to
keep your stew at a consistently high temperature because you're
always in a war with bacteria.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
If you go to.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, you'll get some
specific stats. Stew has to be at a temperature continually
greater than 140 degrees Fahrenheit to make sure it's safe
for people to eat.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So it does kill all the germs. That low and
slow has got to be at least up to 140
degrees Fahrenheit. Don't want it to drop below that for
long at all, or else you can get some bacteria
starting to form. It can also be tough to tell
if the stew has gone rancid. This is kind of gross.
I'm not going to lie. Because there is no distinct
(26:56):
flavor profile. I think I could taste if the stew
was off, though, even if despite whatever the flavor profile
might be. Rancid, the word, it's just very triggering for me. Like,
you know how moist bothers some people? Rancid does it
for me. Don't love it.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I mean, it's a brilliant point, though, because if you're
kind of doing a soup du jour or flavor of
the day with whatever you have available, you don't. you
cannot logically know what the perfect perpetual stew tastes like
because it changes all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It certainly feels like quite an inexact science. I don't
think anyone is shooting for culinary mastery in these perpetual stews.
It's a little bit more of like, let's throw some
stuff at the wall and hope nobody dies of food poisoning.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, it's a little more impressionist art, let's say, than hyper-realism.
we also promised the story of Lizzie Borden. We have
to get to this. We'll have a bit of a stuff.
They don't want you to know a Venn diagram here. No,
(28:07):
you remember Lizzie from earlier, right? Sure.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
She's the one that took an ax and gave her
mother 40 wax. And when she saw what she had done,
she gave her father 41.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yes, that is the story. And the rhyme scheme is
ethics aside, pretty spot on.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
But, But the issue, as Wren points out, is that
this little ditty, despite being a banger, is not accurate.
We know in August of 1892, and we are getting
to soup here, folks, Lizzie Borden used a hatchet, not
a double-handed axe, to bludgeon her father and her stepmother
(28:46):
to death. That is true.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Ben, not even Eminem could rhyme things with hatchet. Oh, wait.
I'm just joking. That's a challenge to you, Em. I
know you're listening. Yeah. I can already think of one,
and it's Ratchet.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah. If you're willing to catch it, then we can
match it, right? So the thing is here, and thanks
for tuning in, Marshall. The thing is that we have
learned there was arguably a second murder weapon in the
Lizzie Borden case, Stu Gone Bad.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
No. Dude, how does this even work, Ben? How does,
I don't understand. She was dual wielding with the hatchet
in one hand and a cauldron of bad stew in
the other?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Just think of the upper arm strike there, right?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
How many whacks did she give her father with the
bad stew Right.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And we do know Lizzie Borden and her family lived
in a place called Fall River, Massachusetts. So if you're
playing along at home, that's a little south of Boston.
Her dad was an investor who had made a lot
of money in the financial sphere, but he was one
of those quiet, He wasn't living in a mansion. They
(30:02):
had a modest home. They were not in a fancy
pants neighborhood. Lizzie was, according to historians, kind of miffed
about this. She wanted to live more of the high life.
She wanted to live on the hill. Still a very
fancy area of Boston today.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
The hill. Yes. Yeah, you can tell. Remember, in the
olden days, that was kind of what separated the rich
from the poor. The rich people lived up on the hill,
and the poor people lived down in the valley.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Dude, it still happens in New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I know. I guess that is true, yeah. Because up
on the hill, you've got more protection because you can
see the bad guys coming. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Give it up, Anakin. We have the high ground. So-
This is a source of tension for the Borden family.
And her father's preferred neighborhood is just not doing it
for Lizzie. She is also, by all accounts, a staunch Protestant.
And she's kind of pissed that there are a lot
(31:01):
of Catholics moving in. Ruh-roh.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Ruh-roh. This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Although Fall
River Society saw the Bordens as godly, church-going folks, upstanding
members of the community, tensions did begin to brew.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Could we say stew?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
You could say stew, in fact. In fact, you should.
In fact, I don't know why I didn't, and I'll
never forgive myself for that. So it's stewing and brewing
behind these closed doors at the time that the murder occurred.
Lizzie was only 32. unmarried, living at home still with
her parents. And she did not care for this arrangement.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, because the patriarchy then as now is still in
full cartoonish evil effect. Lizzie is at this time considered
a spinster because she's 32 and has not been married.
Her father kept shutting down suitors who would come to
(32:00):
court her And he would say, these guys are gold diggers.
They're fortune hunters.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
And Lizzie is saying, I know we're rich, Dad.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Why do I have to live like a commoner? She said,
I deserve a better life. And I hate how you're
so cheap. You're basically keeping me in prison.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yikes. Bit of title there, Lizzie. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I mean, come on. If you're 14, I get it.
I get being edgy. But if you're 32... I don't know.
She also had some pretty valid criticisms, though.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
That's fair. Yeah. Well, Ben, I guess we should probably
get to the murdery bite of the stew.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
We promised. We should deliver.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yes, we promised that we should deliver. The Borden family
did own an icebox, kind of the predecessor of the
modern day refrigerator. But These iceboxes did not run on electricity.
This is a very weird time for the refrigeration industry.
This is where there were entire businesses that would travel
(33:07):
up north and get huge blocks of ice, cover it
with straw, and then run like hell back down to
their customers. So they had these big blocks of ice
in a wooden chest that was lined with zinc or tin,
and the idea was you would be able to keep
(33:28):
stuff cool doing that. Unfortunately, the Borden murders happened in August.
I mean, it'd be unfortunate whichever month they happened in.
Ice melts when it melts.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Nobody wants to get murdered in the hot, hot heat
of the summer. Let's just do it in stew weather.
It's nice and cool. Speaking of it.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Speaking of it.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It's best time to get murdered.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
As Atlanta natives, yeah. We know ice melts when it's
hot outside. So the Borden's icebox is useless. And directly
before the murders, the day before Lizzie Borden kills her family,
their family maid, a woman named Bridget, cooks a pot
(34:13):
of stew. And I believe, Noel, it's mutton stew. So
they had leftover sheep, I guess.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Mm-hmm. I do love a good mutton stew. Lamb is
my favorite of all the meats. That's right, Ben. Then
Bridget left the stew in the pot to cool until
it reached room temperature. She then reheated the stew for
dinner that night and then left it to come cool again. Whoops. Yeah, guys,
I already know. You're not supposed to do that. You're
not supposed to, I think, I think you're not even
(34:41):
supposed to like thaw a frozen piece of meat and
then refreeze it. Right. Because if it keeps changing state
like that and temperatures, I think that is a real
no-no in terms of creating a breeding ground for pathogens.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
A hundred percent. You nailed it. So we've got two
cooling periods and reheating periods. And on that second cooling period,
Bridget leaves the stew to sit overnight inside the house,
no air conditioning, dog days of summer. It's August, right?
The next morning, she reheats the stew for a third
(35:18):
time and she serves it to the family as breakfast.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Who's the real murderer here? I think it's this Bridget character.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I mean, we don't have my stew murder by stew.
We don't have her hands on the hatchet. But I
hear where you're coming from. This is this is the
really interesting part. And I think you and Max and
I did not know this. During breakfast, Lizzie did not
join her father and stepmother for their repast. So her
(35:50):
parents later take ill with what we suspect could be
food poisoning. while Lizzie Borden is alive and well, physically.
Probably mentally in a very difficult place, but physically fine.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, and Lizzie's father and stepmother were murdered shortly after
breakfast was served, as they recovered from their stew poisoning
in separate rooms. There were no reports of anyone, including Lizzie,
coming or going from the home within the time frame
the murders occurred, but Lizzie was the only logical suspect.
(36:24):
The Victorian sensibilities of the community would not allow them
to believe, however, that a faithful woman of good standing
could have committed such a vile and heinous crime.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, and as a result, Lizzie Borden was acquitted. Because
she was found innocent, she was now legally eligible to
inherit her share of her father's estate. This was approximately
$ 300, 000 at the time. Could we inflation calculate?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Oh, boop. And a boop.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
That is $ 10 million today.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Get yourself a nice 14-room mansion on the hill with
money like that, couldn't you, Ben?
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, and that's just what she did.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Isn't it? You know what they say, Willy Wonka himself,
whatever happened to the woman who got everything she wanted?
She lived happily ever after. We also, weirdly enough, backstage,
we have kind of a Willy Wonka vibe going on
because we met Ben from Ben & Jerry's. Boy, did
we have And, you know, what is ice cream if
not frozen stew?
Speaker 1 (37:28):
You were on fire today, man. I'm loving these quotables.
We know that despite the fact that Lizzie Borden did
get acquitted and did encounter the opulent lifestyle she had
always aspired to, she was a pariah. She was a
social outcast up until her death in 1927 when she
was 66 years old. To this very day, I didn't
(37:55):
know this, to this very day, official records list the
Borden family murders as unsolved.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Unsolved. Ben, we got a few little bits of tangents
and trivia here at the end, but I think we
should add this to our upcoming tangents and trivia-a-thon and
wrap this up with a nice old history murder mystery.
You could say we're going to put this into the
perpetual stew of our leftovers episode. You've been saving that
this whole time.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
You monster.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
I'm going to simmer on it. I'm going to simmer
on it.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Simmer down now.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Simmer down. We cannot thank you enough for joining us today, folks.
Big thanks to our super producer, Max of Freight Train Williams.
Big thanks to our research associate, the legendary Ren.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Who else?
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Who else?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Well, geez, Ben, Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a. The Quister. I know,
I know. A.J. Bahamas, Jacobs, The Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And of course, the rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime. If
you dig us, you'll love them. Big shout out as
well to Christopher Haciotis, Eve's Jeffcoat, Here in Spirit. Noel,
I know this happens all the time. We've been doing
this for years now. Well, we skipped lunch to record
and now we're doing another episode about food. Is it time?
(39:12):
Is it soup time?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
It's not quite stewy enough out there for me.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
But ramen would be– there's a good ramen spot nearby
that is again on the verge of stew. I'm going
to have a little ramen. Somehow ramen doesn't feel as
heavy as stew and I think I can do a
bit of a late snack. ramen.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Okay. Well, folks, I'm not going to eat on air
because Max and I both have pretty severe misophonia.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That's true. And it's a good thing because we're ending
the episode now, aren't we?
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yes, we are.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Let's give a big shout
out to our super producer, Max the Madman Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Max Brain Stew Williams. Remember Brain Stew, that Green Day song?
What an odd name for a song. Didn't even mention
Stew once.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You know, you're Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bullitt. And Noel,
you and I have been having some adventures recently. Max,
you're going to join Noel and I on a madcap
escapade pretty soon. And you know what really hit me
earlier this month, just a few days ago, you guys?
(01:07):
I walked out. It wasn't. incredibly hot and humid outside.
It was autumnal and it hit me. Noel, we might
be officially into soup weather.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
We're approaching it, Ben. Don't let it trick you, brother.
Still 80 something degrees today in Atlanta, but no, I'm
with you and I can't wait. Stew weather, sweater weather. Yes, indeed.
The autumn is upon us, or at least it's creeping up.
Halloween spooky season. We love it.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, something tasty this way comes. Now, as you know, folks,
we are all kind of foodies. We're fans of food,
and we have been astonished in past episodes by the deep, rich,
and at times ridiculous history of food. One of the
(01:58):
strangest things that we have encountered, thanks to our amazing
research associate, Wrenn, is the idea of a stew that
never ends.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It is the stew that never ends. The never-ending stew-ry.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Get it?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
The never-ending stew-ry?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Is stew-ry like the....
Speaker 2 (02:21):
The study of stew?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, you're in New York right now. I'm sure there's
a stewery next to a brewery. Oh, a stewery could
be a stew establishment, right?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah. So we know the following.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And big thanks to Zach Makes over on social media,
should thou sip. We know this. Quote, perpetual stew is
a dish that is cooked continuously, always simmering over heat.
with more liquid and ingredients added as needed to replenish
its volume. There are no required ingredients besides a liquid,
(02:56):
which helps it maintain a high temperature without burning. Also,
shout out to Food & Wine magazine.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, and I mean, I guess the question that immediately
comes to mind for me and probably a lot of
you out in the audience, is this sanitary? Is this legal? Okay,
that's another good one. And then you start to ask yourself, well,
maybe if it stays at a certain temperature, it kills
all the germs forever. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And then Wren hit us with another plot twist, folks.
She said, What does perpetual stew have to do with
Lizzie Borden?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Wait a minute.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Talk about a curveball. I know. I know.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
But here's our ad break. You know, Ben, I have
always aspired to become a tavern wench.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I think it's too late for me.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
No, of course not, man. I believe in you. I
have your back, as you know, to a cartoonish degree. Uh, we,
we have to say, uh, shout out to Tavern Witches. Uh,
you're going somewhere with that, Dole, because we all recognize
in the West, the fantasy, uh, trope of people going
(04:09):
to the inn. You see it in video games like
The Witcher, uh, Max and I love The Witcher. Uh,
you see it in, of course, Lord of the Rings
when the hobbits, uh, get to the town.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
They're running from the Wraiths.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
They're running from the Wraiths. You see it in Game
of Thrones, an adaptation of the brilliant novel series Song
of Ice and Fire.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
There was a real good tavern sequence in Night of
the Seven Kingdoms that was sort of an inciting incident
that led to the young secret prince being part of
the crew. The Traveler of Kati, of two.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, and if you.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Dunk and Egg.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Dunk and Egg, yes. And if you find yourself in
this wide world encountering maybe a small off-the-beaten-path bed and breakfast,
something like that, then you know that there's probably going
to be a limited menu. There are probably going to
be not too many customers there. And you probably also
(05:05):
will realize that fantasy tropes have kind of embellished things.
Those ale houses and taverns and inns of yesteryear, They
weren't just for drinking. They weren't just meaderies. They were also,
I love that term.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Meaderies. Yeah, meaderies. And meat markets.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes, sometimes uncomfortably so. But they were also, Noel, to
borrow your earlier phrase, they were steweries. They were salons.
They were cafes.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
It was the easiest thing to just kind of have on.
I get it. Logistically, it makes sense. You didn't have
to do much prep work other than just chop up
whatever you had laying around because this was certainly, you know,
these were often those types of joints. They didn't exactly
have a specialized, you know, prefix menu. But they might
come into some, you know, they had a little surplus
(05:55):
of carrots that they didn't need for feeding the horses.
They'd use them for feeding the people. Chop them up,
throw them in the pot. It's always there, hanging in
the hearth, always at a slow simmer. Yeah, this reminds
me of two things. The first is a funny story
from a fellow traveler, a friend of mine. He was
(06:16):
I'm not going to say the specific place, but he
was in a small town in a different part of
the world and he was hungry. And so he walked
into a place that he thought was an abandoned restaurant.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
He sat there. He said the service was horrible. They
didn't have a menu. Eventually, they just bought him, you know,
like some water or a beer and a pot of stew.
And he ate it. And when it came time to
pay the bill, the folks who gave him the stew
told him this was their house and not a restaurant.
(06:54):
They were just that nice. He had just walked in
to this place and they wouldn't, you know, turn away
a guest.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Well, that's nice. What is that? The, uh, the, the,
the God's hospitality, hospitality.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
There we are.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You've broken bread with me.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Uh, also shout out to scary stories to tell in
the dark, uh, the, or the old trope about stone soup.
That's a great one.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Ben, remember the episode of, are you afraid in the
dark about the soup that made you like terrified? It was, uh,
one of those Vink, Dr. Vink, Vink episodes. And he
basically ran like a weird tavern in the middle of
the woods and some Canadian teenager wandered into it. And
there was this soup that, uh, you'd eat it and
(07:39):
it would make you like hallucinate and see like your
worst fear.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Oh, I, I've got to check that out. I'm putting
it on the list and, uh, I'm going to watch
it at home though. I'm not going to go to
an ale house, a tavern or an inn. Well, I
might end up at a hotel for this, but, uh,
We know there's a quick differentiation, courtesy of Red. Ale
houses would serve your beer, your mead. Taverns apparently would
(08:05):
serve wine. Inns, however, would serve beer, wine, and hot meals.
This is where you would order the older equivalent of
bar food, like you're hanging out at an amazing bar.
dive bar or something, and you've got a bit of
a craving, right? A bit of a hole in your stomach.
(08:27):
So you look at their menu, you get, you know,
a bag of chips or you get a side of
fries and queso or whatever. In Britain, there's something called
the Plowman's Lunch. Do you remember this?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I don't think I know the Plowman's Lunch, but I
do know that Hunter's Stew is a thing in Polish cuisine,
which is probably similar to what you're talking about. Yeah,
Hunter's stew is, it can be a perpetual stew because
we know in days past, innkeepers, like you described earlier,
(09:01):
would just have a cauldron, a literal cauldron on the hearth.
And they would say, oh, we've got some carrots or, right,
we have some mushrooms. We might have gone big time.
We might have some pepper and just pour it in there.
and you would serve that to people if they wanted
(09:22):
food along with their mead. Also often referred to as potage, potage, potage.
I like that better. And it really was more of
a logistical concern because of the feudal system. Medieval societies
were organized into these clear social strata, you know, the upstairs,
downstairs of it all, with the king at the top, way, way,
way upstairs. Nobility and lords and clergymen next. Knights, of course,
(09:45):
a little bit below nobility. And then peasants. of course,
being the largest, poorest, and lowest of the classes. The
Lord answered to the king, but oversaw the daily lives
of his fiefdoms, the peasants, in town. Though the peasants
did grow the crops and do all the work to
keep those communities functioning, the Lord actually took a portion
(10:08):
of their crops and their earnings, and in some cases
could actually decide who a peasant might marry, or if
they were to be allowed to leave the community and
move to another village. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
So what we're telling you here is at most points
in this part of history, the majority of people did
not have what we would call human rights. They did
not have agency of transit. We're not going to get
into prima noctis tonight, but there's a reason.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That's the king's privilege, right?
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Right. There's a reason that Shibboleth exists. We know that
I love your setup here, Noel, because we know that
due to this feudal structure, if you are a serf,
if you are a peasant, if you are the majority
of the population, you live and die based on the harvest.
So if your crops don't yield enough food from the soil,
(11:06):
that means that you have not just nothing to sell,
you have nothing to eat. And this is why stew
is a catbird seat for folks.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
No, it's true. I mean, I understand. Stu, if I
was to think of myself as my aspirational role of
tavern wench, I would be surveying the contents of my
fridge and all the little things that were maybe just
on the edge of spoiling. Maybe, you know, what better
way to use those sort of slightly soft carrots than
(11:37):
throwing them in a pot where you can't really tell
anymore that they were.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
You know, on the edge of spoiling.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You can tell that both my co-host and I make
a lot of soup. I mean, look, and I'm not
saying I exclusively use soup for this purpose, but it
is a really good one because, or, you know, it's
almost like maybe using the avocado that's about to go
that ain't quite so pretty, but you throw it into
a smoothie and you'd never know. It's not non-hygienic. Just
nobody wants to necessarily look at it or eat the
(12:05):
brown bits, but it doesn't mean that it's like dangerous
or in any way like, you know, Bad for health. Contaminated.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Thank you. Yeah, yeah. And this is interesting because the
stew in question in our tavern wench innkeeper situation here,
the stew in question is not necessarily using water for
the peasantry of the time. This stew was using beer.
(12:34):
The basis, the liquid basis of the stew was, was
probably beer because it was just safer to drink.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, beer is a great additive to a good soup
or a stew or a braise.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I like cheese and beer, broccoli soup, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
It adds a really nice little kick to it. I'll
use beer in a chili. Chili is the ultimate stew
in a lot of ways. What is chili if not
sort of a stew?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, and an aspiration for cumin. Just like we're saying, folks,
these taverns relied on whatever was cheap, and available or leftover.
So you would go in the back garden and you
would collect parsley and sage and, you know, cousins of mint,
and you would throw that into the stew. People would
(13:20):
come to your tavern. You wouldn't have a menu. You
would just give them stew if they ordered it. And
if you go to like a fancier place, like the
kind of place the Aristos would go to, then you
would get increasingly cool cuts of meat with your stew.
It'd still be the same kind of basic stew, but
(13:42):
they would put in venison or veal, and then they
would add the fancy spices that a lot of peasantry
would never get a chance to taste.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Ben, I have to conjecture that some horse ended up
in there from time to time. Of course, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
A horse is a horse, of course, of course.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Of course, yeah, yeah. I mean, it depends on what's available,
and sometimes Especially after wartime, that would be dogs, maybe,
or cats.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Again, whatever's laying around. Whatever's around. I mean, you know,
you might have to put down a mare, you know,
and what are you going to do? Let that meat
go to waste? Hell no. I mean, as we mentioned,
I mean, these folks were kind of living hand to mouth, literally.
So you would definitely throw some of that, some of
those choicest bits of the horse into the stew.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah. And now, okay, so let's say I'm an innkeeper
and I'm doing my best to keep the medieval version
of Gordon Ramsay from coming into my restaurant and embarrassing me.
So I want to be efficient. That means I'm going
to save time. I'm going to serve a very simple menu.
(14:47):
Gordon loves that. We'll have the stew. We'll have bread.
And If it's available, we might have cheese. We might
have some older smoked meat. We simmer this stew 24
hours per day, seven days a week. And it makes
it easier for us as innkeepers and tavern wenches to
(15:13):
keep customers fed, which means we don't have extensive prep
work all the time, right? You just throw the stuff
in there. went into the cauldron when you have the stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, and I just want to point out too, um,
some of the best, you know, uh, masters of, of
soup and stewery, like ramen chefs, uh, they will simmer
their bone broths, you know, for sometimes days and days
at a time or however many it's definitely time is, uh,
often what makes the tenderest of, of meats and the
(15:46):
most savory and, uh, flavorful of broths. You know, if
I'm going to make a chili or a beef stew,
for example, I want to cook it low and slow
for a really, really long time. So this perpetual stew idea,
the more I think about it, the more I think
I'd try it.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Have you not?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
No, I'm not. Where's the best perpetual stew joint in
Atlanta or New York?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Let's get to it. There are some in the United States,
maybe not in Atlanta. You've nailed it there, Noel. Then
as now, people are working with what they have in
the most creative way possible. We know that over a
(16:29):
thousand years of the medieval period, there were seasons that
had a lot of rainfall. So if you go to
Johann Gutenberg University, you'll see the following. It's a little
bit of an involved quote, but it sets up the
rest of the story perfectly.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
The late Middle Ages were characterized by two distinct wet periods.
What's the stupid? It's not a part of the wet period.
In Central Europe in the 13th and 14th century, separated
by dry summer weather between 1300 and 1340. The increase
in summer rainfall between 1350 and 1370 is remarkable and
occurred exactly at the time when the plague broke out
(17:11):
and spread across the entire European continent. Yeah, you don't
want wet weather when there's plague going. That's gonna, it's
gonna aid in the spread of it. Right. You always
talk about people saying, you know, convalescing, uh, in dry climates,
you know, you definitely don't want to be sick, um,
or have a, have a communicable disease when the weather
(17:32):
is wetter.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And so this constant rain, which, you know,
sounds good for crops, this constant rain flooded the fields
and now the people working in the agricultural industries can't
really harvest those crops. So they're running out of wheat
and barley. If we're talking about the big floods during
(17:54):
this time period, livestock drowned or they got sick because
of that swampy standing water. They starved to death.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
People got swamp butt, foot rot.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, swamp butt, foot rot. Watch out for them.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And then you've got, of course, the plague, the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Insult to injury, man. Yeah, so now we don't, just
have a dearth of food, we have a shortage of
living people. So the food you can buy is at a.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Way higher price because there are way fewer people who
can make it.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The solution? Stew.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, stew. You had me at stew. It's, in fact,
a really, really great way to warm your weary bones
of a cold and rainy evening, especially if you're a
hut owner. A roof is made of thatch, for example,
and is not really doing a great job of keeping
that wet and cold out. You don't have to have bread.
(18:52):
It'd be nice, but not required. You know bread for dipping?
Throw it all in there. Put it in a bread bowl.
How do you feel about bread bowls, Ben? I think
they're a little extra, but I do enjoy one from
time to time.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, nice crusty bread bowl, especially if it's good bread.
Once a year, I'd say. On a cold night, I'll
take a bread bowl.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
There is an excellent Polish restaurant in Brooklyn called Karzma,
and they do these hot white borschts in a bread bowl,
and it's phenomenal. It's one of my favorites. It comes
with a hard-boiled egg in it and sausage and stuff,
and it's creamy. kind of pickly almost tasting soup. Because
(19:36):
typically people think of borscht as like a red, red, red,
cold beet soup, which is not my bag. But hot
white borscht is pretty fantastic, especially in a bread bowl.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I am on board with this. And you'll have to do,
can you text me the name of that restaurant?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Sure, we'll take you there myself one day. So it's
a fabulous spot. I'd love to go. Let's take Max too. And,
you know, this is operationally, objectively for people in this
time period, It is the worst time of their lives.
It's the worst time to be alive.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
There's rain. There's famine. Everyone you love is dying. The
nobility still kind of sucks. So what we see is
that disease and famine and privation are hitting every imaginable demographic.
The nobility is feeling the pinch as well. So The
(20:35):
surviving peasantry, the surviving majority of society is able to
gain bargaining power with these aristocrats that were pretty much
slave owners such that these peasants can go to the
rulers of the day and say, we want higher wages.
(20:56):
We need more land. We can have a revolution or
you can be cool. This overturned the feudal system. And
Stu was a part of it because Stu kept him going.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
How do you feel about the name Stu as a
short name for Stuart?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
I was thinking about that. I was thinking about that.
One of my favorite characters.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I think it's cute.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah. One of my favorite characters from a Stephen King
novel called The Stand is named Stuart Redman. And I
like Stu. I prefer Stu to Stuart.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I don't know why. Stu was the name of Tommy's
dad in Rugrats cartoon.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Stew pickles. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Stewie was the baby.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Dude, we need a stew in the crew.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
No, I'm thinking of Stewie Griffin. Oh, that's a different stew.
That's right. But a stew was the dad on Rugrats.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yes. And we'll go to the hill on that one, folks.
We also need a stew in the crew. And we
have to point out to the earlier question, where is
the best perpetual stew? It's pretty fascinating because you can
tell there's some parallel thinking here in a culinary milieu.
(22:07):
Perpetual stew is not unique to medieval European culture. Some
of the longest simmering extant stews can be found over
in Asia.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, again, like the ramen situation, that broth is a history.
of slow, slow, long simmers that really, I mean, it is,
if you're into cooking, you know that that is how
you get those flavors to come out, to truly get infused.
Time is everything when it comes to proper cooking.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yes, absolutely. And without being that unfortunate meme of a
Westerner who visits Japan and comes back performative, we can
tell you that the oldest continuously simmering soup as of September,
2026 comes from Japan. It's at a restaurant called Otafuku
(22:59):
and Otafuku serves a stew called Odin that they've been
cooking continually 24 hours a day, seven days a week
since 1945. Dude.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Okay. I'm going, uh, you gotta give me a text
me the name. Cause I think I mentioned on this
pod that I'm going to Japan in November, um, with my,
So I'm super down to try that, if only for
podcast reasons. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Did you?
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It was. I have not tried that one, but I have.
I'm an enthusiast.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
You've had some long soups.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Elderly soups.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I see.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
I've sipped some elderly soups. We know that. It's interesting, Noel,
because we know that this restaurant, their perpetual stew in 1916,
and they had an interruption due to World War II.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Oh, man. World War II always is messing up everyone's
perpetual stew and everything else. The next oldest continuous stew,
if you wish, can be enjoyed at a place called
Watana Panich, a family-run restaurant in Bangkok in Thailand. This
is a beef stew I was mentioning. It's been cooking
for more than 60 years. The main ingredients include, according
(24:18):
to NPR and the restaurant themselves, nearly a dozen Chinese
herbs plus garlic, cinnamon, black pepper, cilantro root, and 150
pounds of beef per day. Another culinary note is the
type of meat you use usually in beef stew, stew meat,
you really have to cook it for a really long
(24:40):
time at low heat for it to even be edible.
If you tried to just like, you know, give that
a quick pan sear, you're going to be chewing on
that bad boy for a long time. So the way
to break down the fibers in the meat is by slowly,
you know, cooking, cooking it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And astute, ridiculous historians, you heard what we said, 150
pounds of beef per day. So they're selling a lot
of stew.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
They're slinging some stew.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
But also we have to wonder if they're in on
a technicality because the owner's of Watana Paniche, they say
that they clean the stew pot nightly by removing most
of the stew and leaving a little bit in the
bottom to retain the flavor.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It's like the Olympic flame. You know, you got to
have a little bit of the original left to say
that it is perpetual. I'm intrigued, man. It's sort of
a weird flex at this point in history, I would argue.
You know, it's like, look what we're doing. Whereas back
in the olden times, the medieval times, it was a
little more of a product of necessity, right? Now it's like,
(25:45):
I don't think anybody has to do this anymore, but
it's an interesting tradition to carry on. But I think
I posed the million, at least $ 100 question at the
top of the show is like, is this safe?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah. Yeah, asterisk, caveat, fine print. It is safe if
it is cooked correctly. And a lot of it goes
down to the science of this. So You got to
keep your stew at a consistently high temperature because you're
always in a war with bacteria.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
If you go to.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, you'll get some
specific stats. Stew has to be at a temperature continually
greater than 140 degrees Fahrenheit to make sure it's safe
for people to eat.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So it does kill all the germs. That low and
slow has got to be at least up to 140
degrees Fahrenheit. Don't want it to drop below that for
long at all, or else you can get some bacteria
starting to form. It can also be tough to tell
if the stew has gone rancid. This is kind of gross.
I'm not going to lie. Because there is no distinct
(26:56):
flavor profile. I think I could taste if the stew
was off, though, even if despite whatever the flavor profile
might be. Rancid, the word, it's just very triggering for me. Like,
you know how moist bothers some people? Rancid does it
for me. Don't love it.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I mean, it's a brilliant point, though, because if you're
kind of doing a soup du jour or flavor of
the day with whatever you have available, you don't. you
cannot logically know what the perfect perpetual stew tastes like
because it changes all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It certainly feels like quite an inexact science. I don't
think anyone is shooting for culinary mastery in these perpetual stews.
It's a little bit more of like, let's throw some
stuff at the wall and hope nobody dies of food poisoning.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, it's a little more impressionist art, let's say, than hyper-realism.
we also promised the story of Lizzie Borden. We have
to get to this. We'll have a bit of a stuff.
They don't want you to know a Venn diagram here. No,
(28:07):
you remember Lizzie from earlier, right? Sure.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
She's the one that took an ax and gave her
mother 40 wax. And when she saw what she had done,
she gave her father 41.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yes, that is the story. And the rhyme scheme is
ethics aside, pretty spot on.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
But, But the issue, as Wren points out, is that
this little ditty, despite being a banger, is not accurate.
We know in August of 1892, and we are getting
to soup here, folks, Lizzie Borden used a hatchet, not
a double-handed axe, to bludgeon her father and her stepmother
(28:46):
to death. That is true.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Ben, not even Eminem could rhyme things with hatchet. Oh, wait.
I'm just joking. That's a challenge to you, Em. I
know you're listening. Yeah. I can already think of one,
and it's Ratchet.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah. If you're willing to catch it, then we can
match it, right? So the thing is here, and thanks
for tuning in, Marshall. The thing is that we have
learned there was arguably a second murder weapon in the
Lizzie Borden case, Stu Gone Bad.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
No. Dude, how does this even work, Ben? How does,
I don't understand. She was dual wielding with the hatchet
in one hand and a cauldron of bad stew in
the other?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Just think of the upper arm strike there, right?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
How many whacks did she give her father with the
bad stew Right.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And we do know Lizzie Borden and her family lived
in a place called Fall River, Massachusetts. So if you're
playing along at home, that's a little south of Boston.
Her dad was an investor who had made a lot
of money in the financial sphere, but he was one
of those quiet, He wasn't living in a mansion. They
(30:02):
had a modest home. They were not in a fancy
pants neighborhood. Lizzie was, according to historians, kind of miffed
about this. She wanted to live more of the high life.
She wanted to live on the hill. Still a very
fancy area of Boston today.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
The hill. Yes. Yeah, you can tell. Remember, in the
olden days, that was kind of what separated the rich
from the poor. The rich people lived up on the hill,
and the poor people lived down in the valley.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Dude, it still happens in New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I know. I guess that is true, yeah. Because up
on the hill, you've got more protection because you can
see the bad guys coming. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Give it up, Anakin. We have the high ground. So-
This is a source of tension for the Borden family.
And her father's preferred neighborhood is just not doing it
for Lizzie. She is also, by all accounts, a staunch Protestant.
And she's kind of pissed that there are a lot
(31:01):
of Catholics moving in. Ruh-roh.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Ruh-roh. This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Although Fall
River Society saw the Bordens as godly, church-going folks, upstanding
members of the community, tensions did begin to brew.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Could we say stew?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
You could say stew, in fact. In fact, you should.
In fact, I don't know why I didn't, and I'll
never forgive myself for that. So it's stewing and brewing
behind these closed doors at the time that the murder occurred.
Lizzie was only 32. unmarried, living at home still with
her parents. And she did not care for this arrangement.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, because the patriarchy then as now is still in
full cartoonish evil effect. Lizzie is at this time considered
a spinster because she's 32 and has not been married.
Her father kept shutting down suitors who would come to
(32:00):
court her And he would say, these guys are gold diggers.
They're fortune hunters.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
And Lizzie is saying, I know we're rich, Dad.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Why do I have to live like a commoner? She said,
I deserve a better life. And I hate how you're
so cheap. You're basically keeping me in prison.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yikes. Bit of title there, Lizzie. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I mean, come on. If you're 14, I get it.
I get being edgy. But if you're 32... I don't know.
She also had some pretty valid criticisms, though.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
That's fair. Yeah. Well, Ben, I guess we should probably
get to the murdery bite of the stew.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
We promised. We should deliver.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yes, we promised that we should deliver. The Borden family
did own an icebox, kind of the predecessor of the
modern day refrigerator. But These iceboxes did not run on electricity.
This is a very weird time for the refrigeration industry.
This is where there were entire businesses that would travel
(33:07):
up north and get huge blocks of ice, cover it
with straw, and then run like hell back down to
their customers. So they had these big blocks of ice
in a wooden chest that was lined with zinc or tin,
and the idea was you would be able to keep
(33:28):
stuff cool doing that. Unfortunately, the Borden murders happened in August.
I mean, it'd be unfortunate whichever month they happened in.
Ice melts when it melts.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Nobody wants to get murdered in the hot, hot heat
of the summer. Let's just do it in stew weather.
It's nice and cool. Speaking of it.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Speaking of it.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It's best time to get murdered.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
As Atlanta natives, yeah. We know ice melts when it's
hot outside. So the Borden's icebox is useless. And directly
before the murders, the day before Lizzie Borden kills her family,
their family maid, a woman named Bridget, cooks a pot
(34:13):
of stew. And I believe, Noel, it's mutton stew. So
they had leftover sheep, I guess.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Mm-hmm. I do love a good mutton stew. Lamb is
my favorite of all the meats. That's right, Ben. Then
Bridget left the stew in the pot to cool until
it reached room temperature. She then reheated the stew for
dinner that night and then left it to come cool again. Whoops. Yeah, guys,
I already know. You're not supposed to do that. You're
not supposed to, I think, I think you're not even
(34:41):
supposed to like thaw a frozen piece of meat and
then refreeze it. Right. Because if it keeps changing state
like that and temperatures, I think that is a real
no-no in terms of creating a breeding ground for pathogens.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
A hundred percent. You nailed it. So we've got two
cooling periods and reheating periods. And on that second cooling period,
Bridget leaves the stew to sit overnight inside the house,
no air conditioning, dog days of summer. It's August, right?
The next morning, she reheats the stew for a third
(35:18):
time and she serves it to the family as breakfast.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Who's the real murderer here? I think it's this Bridget character.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I mean, we don't have my stew murder by stew.
We don't have her hands on the hatchet. But I
hear where you're coming from. This is this is the
really interesting part. And I think you and Max and
I did not know this. During breakfast, Lizzie did not
join her father and stepmother for their repast. So her
(35:50):
parents later take ill with what we suspect could be
food poisoning. while Lizzie Borden is alive and well, physically.
Probably mentally in a very difficult place, but physically fine.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, and Lizzie's father and stepmother were murdered shortly after
breakfast was served, as they recovered from their stew poisoning
in separate rooms. There were no reports of anyone, including Lizzie,
coming or going from the home within the time frame
the murders occurred, but Lizzie was the only logical suspect.
(36:24):
The Victorian sensibilities of the community would not allow them
to believe, however, that a faithful woman of good standing
could have committed such a vile and heinous crime.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, and as a result, Lizzie Borden was acquitted. Because
she was found innocent, she was now legally eligible to
inherit her share of her father's estate. This was approximately
$ 300, 000 at the time. Could we inflation calculate?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Oh, boop. And a boop.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
That is $ 10 million today.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Get yourself a nice 14-room mansion on the hill with
money like that, couldn't you, Ben?
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, and that's just what she did.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Isn't it? You know what they say, Willy Wonka himself,
whatever happened to the woman who got everything she wanted?
She lived happily ever after. We also, weirdly enough, backstage,
we have kind of a Willy Wonka vibe going on
because we met Ben from Ben & Jerry's. Boy, did
we have And, you know, what is ice cream if
not frozen stew?
Speaker 1 (37:28):
You were on fire today, man. I'm loving these quotables.
We know that despite the fact that Lizzie Borden did
get acquitted and did encounter the opulent lifestyle she had
always aspired to, she was a pariah. She was a
social outcast up until her death in 1927 when she
was 66 years old. To this very day, I didn't
(37:55):
know this, to this very day, official records list the
Borden family murders as unsolved.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Unsolved. Ben, we got a few little bits of tangents
and trivia here at the end, but I think we
should add this to our upcoming tangents and trivia-a-thon and
wrap this up with a nice old history murder mystery.
You could say we're going to put this into the
perpetual stew of our leftovers episode. You've been saving that
this whole time.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
You monster.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
I'm going to simmer on it. I'm going to simmer
on it.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Simmer down now.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Simmer down. We cannot thank you enough for joining us today, folks.
Big thanks to our super producer, Max of Freight Train Williams.
Big thanks to our research associate, the legendary Ren.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Who else?
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Who else?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Well, geez, Ben, Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a. The Quister. I know,
I know. A.J. Bahamas, Jacobs, The Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And of course, the rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime. If
you dig us, you'll love them. Big shout out as
well to Christopher Haciotis, Eve's Jeffcoat, Here in Spirit. Noel,
I know this happens all the time. We've been doing
this for years now. Well, we skipped lunch to record
and now we're doing another episode about food. Is it time?
(39:12):
Is it soup time?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
It's not quite stewy enough out there for me.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
But ramen would be– there's a good ramen spot nearby
that is again on the verge of stew. I'm going
to have a little ramen. Somehow ramen doesn't feel as
heavy as stew and I think I can do a
bit of a late snack. ramen.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Okay. Well, folks, I'm not going to eat on air
because Max and I both have pretty severe misophonia.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That's true. And it's a good thing because we're ending
the episode now, aren't we?
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yes, we are.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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