My brother, Brian, had a grand dish for planned for Christmas dinner together this year, but it turns out the second wave lockdown has hit Toronto.
What did he get for the occasion? Turducken - a dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, further stuffed into a deboned turkey. It is also known as a three bird roast, and Gooducken is a traditional English variant, replacing turkey with goose.
This seems like an exotic dish - a King's feast - to me. It turns out it is. And there are even more exotic feasts for kings of the past. There are bizarre pictures of a combination of pork and turkey - actually stitching together the butchered upper portion of a baby pig with the lower portion of a turkey (or chicken). They are cooked, displayed as entertainment before being eaten. You can look this up and see the creepy picture.
This was popular from 1500 to 1800. Cockentrice is what it was called - a capon and a pig. The instructions include the following: When it is done, gild the outside with egg yolks, ginger, saffron and parsley juice. Then serve it forth for a royal meat.
What was the most extreme form of this tradition? "Roast Without Equal" was formed by stuffing 17 birds inside each other like Russian dolls. You can read about this strange tradition in the Atlantic article HERE.
I am on to Christmas Greetings from a visit to Longwood Gardens quite a while ago. What a beautiful display in the fern house.
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