this part seemed relevant to this blue hellsite ⤵️
It's safe to say that a bunch of people bonding over 100-year-old recipes is not what typically comes to mind when you imagine TikTok food content. But, also, Hollis's current online popularity isn't solely thanks to TikTok. He's also attracted a sizable fandom on the sometimes forgotten, but immensely powerful corner of the internet known as Tumblr. In fact, he's so popular that, in April, he entered into the site's top-20 list of web celebrities, according to Cates Holderness, head of editorial at Tumblr. Holderness told Eater the spike was likely because Hollis did a live video where he finally acknowledged his growing fandom on Tumblr.
"It was really funny to see people freaking out in an excited way, like, 'Oh my gosh, this guy that we love has acknowledged us and thanked us in this really sweet and sincere way'," she said. "He's aware that the Tumblr audience is there, but he's very nervous to interact with it."
Hollis's videos are regularly downloaded from TikTok and re-uploaded on Tumblr, where they have long, very viral second lives, which is actually common for popular TikTok, in general. But, according to Holderness, the thing that really ignited Hollis's fandom on the platform was a text post from 2021 written by a user named @thestuffedalligator. It was shared 25,000 times and reads:
The main thing I get from Dylan Hollis cooking old recipes is this:
Recipes from the 1910s and the Great Depression are great, and I suspect it's because they were made by someone with limited resources. But they found a way to make something good, maybe even something fantastic with those limited resources, and they wanted to write it down and share with their friends so that they could also make something out of saltines and potatoes. Recipes from the 1910s and the Great Depression are written down and shared in love.
The recipes you should fear come from the 1950s and 1960s, which I'm pretty sure are written down and shared as a form of McCarthyism.
"The history side of Tumblr is a very large community," Holderness said. "So it's kind of not surprising that a lot of the recipes that he makes, the older recipes, from the '20s, from the Great Depression, tend to be very popular. The recipes that are either extremely good or extremely terrible, in general, get the most traction."
For what it's worth, Hollis agreed with @thestuffedalligator's post, saying the Great Depression recipes are his favorite and the ones from the '60s are his least favorite; though he doesn't think that McCarthyism is to blame for why recipes from that era are so inedible. Instead, he thinks it was because bringing Jell-O to a potluck was a way to signify that you had enough money to own a refrigerator, and gelatin was marketed to women as a way to stay slim.
it’s very funny to me that Dylan Hollis is exactly the type of man who a grandmother would LOVE. like traditionally speaking she would kill to have her granddaughter bring him back as her boyfriend
The millennial struggle is real and not for anything big or scary. Oh no it’s completely mundane. My problem, you see, is that anytime the word “eggs” is uttered, I have on of two immediate, chaotic, word vomit reactions.
I think part of why I like Dylan b Hollis's baking/cooking videos so much is because they're showcasing the more human part of making food. He's experimenting and learning, having fun and making mistakes, laughing over silly instructions - it reflects the average person's kitchen and experience so much more than a lot of sterilized baking videos do these days. Sitting alone in a kitchen with pre-prepped ingredients, doing it perfectly and flawlessly, has always made most cooking shows feel so distant, like I can't recreate the conditions so it'll never be that perfect. Dylan is actively pulling out the stuff from his cabinets, on a counter with a bit of clutter, using forks instead of mashers. He doesn't always get it right- and makes videos about his investigations into how to fix those mistakes. It feels like he's baking at a more understandable and accessible level than a lot of mainstream baking shows. Makes the videos feel like they have so much more soul to em, even without the humor he adds. It's awesome.
Here, you can see each of the P. G. Wodehouse titles I got. Never bought Jeeves and Wooster books before, but this should be a great read. The BBC series was hilarious, what I recall seeing when I was a kid. Always adored Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry; in fact, I already have books written by them, too. Also got a couple Jane Austen titles and a Fyodor Dostoevsky that are part of a special edition series.
Then I got a bunch of books in this gorgeous special edition collection by Chiltern Publishing. I already had Jane Eyre and a couple other titles in this series, so I hope I don't have any extra copies of anything. I don't think so, but I'll have to unbox my books to find out for sure. I'm a bit worried that I might already have a copy of Wuthering Heights....
And then these books that are more random. I already had books 1 and 2 of Parasyte, so now I also have book 3. Then I already had Baking Yesteryear by B. Dylan Hollis, but this is a signed copy! The Philip Pullman book is a collection of his essays about the writing process. The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce is considered by some to be one of the 100 greatest masterpieces of American literature. And then Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the one book I actually went there for. 😅 Too bad they didn't have a pretty copy, but that's ok. Maybe Chiltern will release one later. 🤔
(Inspired by https://www.instagram.com/p/C3djEWBSA8K/ )
Today was my Second Annual Bad Idea Potluck. I make things that I know are great but can't convince other people to try, and also things that sound horrifying but I'm morbidly curious. Other creations from today:
Chicken and vegetable aspic:
Ham salad:
Tomato Soup Cake, from Dylan Hollis. Voted "most better than it sounds."
Bean Pie, also from Dylan Hollis:
A savory feta cheesecake, with a recipe from Cato:
And honeyed mushrooms from Apicius:
I also made a couple loaves of bread:
Old Fashioned and Manhattan jello shots (Old Fashioned was too strong but the Manhattan was great):
and a bizarre cocktail called the Death Flip (which was truly great, do recommend if you like that sort of thing).