Two videos brought in most of my subs. The other 18 flopped. Is my whole premise the problem, or just the packaging?

I run a food-history channel — I cook what historical figures actually ate (sourced from archives where I can), with the history woven through the cook. ~20 long-form videos in, ~2k subs.

Here's the pattern that's doing my head in. Two videos carried almost all my growth: a gangster's comfort-food pasta, and what an explorer ate while starving at sea on his voyage. Both got pushed hard by Browse and converted well. Everything else — including subjects who are arguably more famous (a Hollywood legend, a famous author, a beloved monarch) — barely moved.

The feedback I consistently get is that the production and editing are good, so I don't think that's the bottleneck. What I can't work out is which of these is actually killing me:

• The premise itself. Does "what did this dead person eat" just not make people click? My two winners feel like they had a hook (a contradiction, a survival story) rather than just a famous name + a meal. The flops were "here's a famous person and their dinner." Is the food-as-the-subject angle a dead end, and should I be leading with the story/tension and treating the food as the way in?
• Titles/thumbnails. Possible I'm packaging the boring ones as menus instead of mysteries.
• Topic ceiling. Maybe this niche just has a low roof and I'm hitting it.

What I'd really value from people who've clawed out of the sub-2k zone: when you had a couple of breakouts and a pile of flops, how did you figure out whether the misses were a packaging problem or a fundamental premise problem? What test actually told you which it was?

https://www.youtube.com/@KazMielony