YMMV / Tasting History with Max Miller

• Friendly Fandoms: With B. Dylan Hollis, the other gay male food historian on Youtube. Their styles are vastly different, so people may prefer one over the other, but they'll still be a fan of both, and the comments have been begging for a collaboration with even Max himself giving the occasional recipe suggestion in his videos. Max even gives a Shout-Out to Hollis in his "Hot Dr. Pepper" video, noting it's more like something Hollis would do than Max's normal fare.
• Funny Moments:
  • Max sarcastically mocks a recipe writer for saying that a bird used in a recipe should be "tender like Mademoiselle Volnais, succulent and well-kept."
    Max: Classy guy. I'm sure Mademoiselle Volnais really appreciated being included in his recipe.
  • While discussing mincemeat pies, Max explains how The San Francisco Chronicle published a recipe they described as "Harmless Meat Pies: They are said to be hygienic and safe to eat".
    Max: If you ever read any recipe that opens with "They're said to be safe to eat", make something else.
  • While discussing the Sally Lunn buns, he not only makes a rather hilarious stab at the first person to attempt to figure out the recipe by calling her presumptuous but fails miserably every time he has to pronounce the English town name of Bath.
  • In his video for kykeon, a Greek soup made of wine, barley, and cheese, the look on his face when he tries it...and hates it...is priceless. It's heavily implied to be the most disgusting thing he has made on the channel (and he once made Spartan black soup!).
    • Also from the Kykeon video, he gets his Large Ham on when he declares it is time to travel back... "to the TIME OF THE GODS!" (Cue Dramatic Thunder and a subtitle saying "insert expensive lightning effect.mov")
  • The video on ninja diets features an aside where he discusses the difficulty in confirming that his take on a recipe turned out as intended. In particular, the texture—is the recipe, a ball of rice, sugar, and herbs, supposed to be brittle or squishy? He settles on brittle, because the recipe mentions breaking them up, and "these balls ended up extremely crushable." Cue aside glance and mutters.
  • His video on nian gao, also known as sticky rice cake, proves why it earned its name when he can't even manage to peel it off the plate! And when it comes to actually chewing it, he has to use the Spongebob "Two Hours Later" cutaway gag.
  • Released a cheeky short video eating a butter sandwich and an apple after he did a video about school lunch in the 1930s and only eating the soup and cookie. People had joked in the comments that he hadn't tried the sandwich or apple.
  • On his website, any mention of hardtack is still followed by the obligatory "(clack clack)."
  • On the website, his description of the peanut butter tomato soup from the Depression-era school lunch video:
    A rather thick soup that tastes as if peanut butter and tomato soup are fighting, and nobody wins.
  • This comment on Civil War stew video:
  B. Dylan Hollis: You mean to say there's a somewhat edible user for my Civil War Hardtack?! I'll stop using them as doorstops and try this now.
  • His video on ancient Roman artichokes and gardens, leading to a discussion about Priapus, Roman God of gardens, fruit trees, and the male genitalia. Cue Record Needle Scratch, cut to shocked Roman statue face
  Max: Having a statue of him protecting your garden is probably gonna go against the HOA.
• Growing the Beard: The video on garum (first posted on June 9, 2020) was the one that really kicked off the Tasting History channel. Coincidentally (or not), he grew an actual beard a month later for his Hippocras video and has kept it ever since, which is fortunate because Perma-Stubble is very flattering on him.
• Memetic Mutation: "Serve it forth." ^ExplanationThis phrase, found at the end of a great many old European recipes, became a catchphrase with his fanbase to the point people were begging Max for shirts featuring the phrase. He put it on shirts and aprons and sports them in several of his videos.
  • "Hardtack." (clack clack) '^ExplanationAfter he first made Hardtack in his video about hardtack and grog, it has become a Running Gag in his videos to cut to this specific moment whenever hardtack is mentioned. This has carried on to his fans, with discussions of hardtack being permeated with gifs of the scene or references to its distinctive clacking noise, and even to his website with the gag written out in text form.
• Tear Jerker:
  • During his video on what settlers ate on the Oregon Trail, he notes that, due to the extreme difficulty of crossing the Rockies, many travelers had to leave behind everything that wasn't strictly necessary for their trip. He then relates one account of a grown man being reduced to tears because he had to leave behind his mother's rolling pin.
    "I remember she always used to use it to roll out her biscuits, and they were awful good biscuits."
  • The video on the Hindenberg disaster is both tear jerker and nightmare fuel, featuring accounts of passengers burning alive, and a mom having to decide which of her kids to throw to safety.

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