November 27, 2025 • 52 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe celebrate such monstrous dishes as the Cockentrice, the Turducken and other historic culinary indulgences – as well related monsters that you might accidentally order at a medieval feast. Bon appétit! (originally published 11/21/2024)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and we have another vault episode
for you. Since this is a holiday week for us,
this is going to be a Monstrous Feast, which originally
published eleven, twenty one, twenty twenty four. So yes, this
is our this is our feast themed episode, and it's
going to get into some questionable recent inventions of the
(00:30):
culinary variety and also some monstrous dishes of the past.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. Hey, what are
we talking about today.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Rob, Oh, we're getting into feasting season here, Joe. So
we're going to do what we've done in the past,
devote an episode to food, but not just you know,
just any food. In the past, we've talked about dangerous foods.
We did several episodes on that. You can find those
if you go back into the archives. But this time
we're going to be talking particularly about some various feast dishes,
(01:20):
some outrageous feast dishes, and then also some sort of
related tangential subject matter that's sort of swirling around those dishes.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Now, I am salivating at the thought of the beauties
and the grotesqueries to follow.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, historic dishes of over indulgence, you might call them,
and such dishes exist throughout the history of human feasting.
As long as human populations have even periodically experienced surplus
and or inequality, there's been room for dishes that simply
go above and beyond what seems reasonable. Decadent delicacies occupied
(01:54):
the tables of the ancient Romans. We'll mention a few,
and of course still to this day we find such
dishes on our tables.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Okay, but I know you got crankin' on this topic
because you were interested in one particular example from history, right.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
That's right, one that you know I think I've had
like a vague familiarity with for a long time because
I feel like I've seen depictions of it before. I'm
really struggling to figure out if I've actually seen a
depiction of this in a film or TV show. But
it's possible because it's a great way to sort of
(02:30):
center what's going on in your setting. But yeah, we're
going to turn to fifteenth century Europe, So the Middle
Ages are giving way to the first stirrings of the Renaissance,
and it's just prime time to sew a suckling pig
and a chicken together and serve it to a bunch
of nobles and royals. A lot of great things come
(02:51):
out of the Renaissance, yes, but there are some. There
are some real clunkers that come out of it as well.
And this and this, I don't know. This could be
one of them. I have not tried it, I will
not be trying it, but it is not impossible that
some of you out there have tried it. The addition
question is the cock and trice not to be confused
(03:11):
with another word that you may find not in a
menu from a tutor England, but more likely in a bestiary.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
That's right, So this other word is cock a trice
rather than cock en trice. It's easy to confuse the two.
They are phonetically similar, spelled similarly, but different things altogether.
Now I'm not going to go extremely deep here because
the cockatrice subject will have some overlap with our past
discussions of the mythical monster known as the basilisk. These
(03:41):
creatures were in many cases, not all, but in many
cases treated as the same thing. A cockatrice is sort
of a loosely defined monster, usually combining Avian and reptilian
features or associations. Sometimes it is kind of straightforwardly a wivern.
It's like a dragon with two legs, no little t
(04:03):
rex arms, just the two legs and then two wings,
and then a rooster's head. It appears in this form
or roughly this form in some medieval manuscripts and some heraldry,
but in other cases it's described as a kind of
fantastically venomous serpent, or as a serpent that hatches from
(04:24):
a cock's egg, sometimes after like a cock egg, is
incubated by a reptile or a toad. Generally, a cockatrice
is bad news. It is a venomous monster or a
monster that kills everything around it. Though there is an
interesting literary history of this word, because if you go
(04:46):
reading the King James translation of the Bible, you will
find lots of references to the cockatrice as a kind
of beast or venomous monster. A couple of examples I
dug up. One is from the Book of Isaiah, chapter
fifty nine, verses four to five, which say none calleth
for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth. They trust in
(05:07):
vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice eggs and weave the spider's web. He
that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is
crushed breaketh out into a viper. Common theme you will
get in some of the Old Testament books of the prophets, is,
(05:28):
you know, comparing wickedness and sin and lack of moral
virtue to venomous animals and predatory animals, dangerous beasts.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
So no hatching cockatrice eggs. That's what I'm taking for
the scripture.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
That's not a good thing to do. You bring forth iniquity.
Another good one I found just this one was a
little pithier. This is from the Book of Jeremiah, chapter eight,
verse seventeen, again the King James translation. It says, for behold,
I will send serpents cockatrices among you, which will not
be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Oh wow, let's say to the point.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
They shall bite you. Now. The word cockatrice does not
appear in later translations of the Bible that are better
informed about what the original Greek and Hebrew words that
are being translated usually mean. The English usage of cockatrice
in the Bible traces back to John Wickliffe's English translation
of the Old Testament, in which a Hebrew word that
(06:29):
probably originally referred to like a snake of venomous reptile
is taken as referring to this strange monster which was
already sort of in consciousness, in part derived from stories
that go back to plenty of the Elder and I
think we've actually talked about these stories before in our
episodes on the Basilisk. But the cockatrice also has some
(06:49):
interesting etymological confusion in its history because the English word
cockatrice is recorded as far back as Late Middle English.
It's derived from an Old French term cockatrice, which in
turn comes from the Latin calcatrix. So it's not actually
related to the English word or the French word cock,
(07:12):
which meaning like you know, a rooster, which that's the
imagery we see in like this heraldry, where it's a
dragon with a rooster's head or somehow a cock's egg
that is hatched in conjunction with reptile interference. Instead, it
goes back to the Latin calcatrix, which means she who treads.
The Latin verb here is calcare, meaning to tread, So
(07:34):
a calcatrix is a female entity who treads. So there's
some more word confusion for you, but the main point
being that a cockatrice is a monster and a cockin
trice is something completely different. It is the food that
we're about to talk about.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, and I can't promise that the word is just
going to get any easier to digest, but yeah, the
cock and trice, to be clear, is a composite dish.
So in the front you have a suckling pig and
in the back a turkey or capon. Capon is a
neutered male chicken. So the result is a feast item
of intrigue, as if the folks present for the meal
(08:12):
are being served not an animal of the mundane world,
but rather some fantastic hybrid that you know belongs, perhaps
in a bestiary alongside the cock a trice.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yeah, make you monsters out of our food, a tradition
that is not entirely gone. By the way, I'm sure
many people listening have seen like viral images of this
sort that get shared around the internet. One that very
much sticks in my mind is whoever first had the
idea to make a face hugger from the Alien series
out of like a turkey's body with some crab legs
(08:45):
on the side, and then a tail made out of
like a stuffed sausage.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, he's send me that photo. It's quite horrifying.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, it makes you want to eat them, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
And you know even you know, vegans and vegetari get
in on the action as well. I know in my
household it has become a tradition. On Halloween we make
a dish that is known by a few different names.
You and I, I think both know it as feet
of meat. It has also been called feet loaf. I
know Amy Sedaris calls it as such, but essentially it
(09:18):
is meat loafer. In our case, we was like, you know,
imitation meat that takes the form of one or two
disembodied bloody feet.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Beautiful. That's so nice.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So you know, I can't be too judging about all
this because I totally do it as well. Now, as
for the cockin trice here, I looked up some more
info on this in a book from Terry Breverton called
The tutor kitchen, and he goes into a little more
detail here mentions that the way you make one of
(09:50):
these things is that you first of all, you of
course butcher the two animals in question, and then once
you've butchered them, you know you've removed everything. You know,
you don't need to be part of the finished meal,
you know how butchering works. You stitch these together, then
you stuff it as you would often stuff, you know,
various feast items, as turkeys are still stuffed to this day,
(10:13):
you know, for Thanksgiving in America. And then you roast
it on a spit per, you know, the usual treatment
of the day. Now. Originally the dish, according to Breverton,
was known as cocka gris in this or perhaps catt agris,
and this is combining the words for cock and gris
(10:36):
a suckling pig. That being said, it does I mean,
I couldn't find much where people are really talking about
the the the comparison between these two words. It seems
to me that if the word for the monster cock
a trice is at all in some form like floating
around in one's vocabulary, then cock in trice is some
(10:58):
sort of an allusion to that but I couldn't find
any hard answers on that. There are also various other
spellings for the food item here the cock and trice,
as well as fifteenth century recipes that lay out the
steps to produce one. And this has long been a novelty.
It was a novelty when it was served on the
(11:19):
tables and Tutor England. And you can look around. You
can find various videos online of modern chefs and you know,
amateur chefs and streamers recreating it for entertainment purposes and
for exploration purposes, like there's nothing you know, there's nothing
you know you know off the board occurring in the
creation of this dish. I was looking around at various
(11:43):
people that were either talking directly about it or sometimes
just invoking it. As an example of the latter, I
saw a work by a writer by the name of
Karen Robber who described or raper, who describes it as
performing meat, which I thought was an interesting phrase, like
the meat eat in this case is not just here
for your consumption, one would assume it is also supposed
(12:05):
to taste good. But on top of that, it is
like the sheer performance of the presentation, which you know
that's gonna be president a lot of meals, but like
it becomes part of the forefront in a case like this.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah. I might have some different terminology that we could
apply to this category later in the episode, but I'd
say I primarily think of this as stunt food.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Stunt food is good.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, Yeah, it's food that's not just to be eaten,
it's also to be admired as an act.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yes. So, Reverenson's book contains numerous other, at least from
my vantage point, strange Tutor dishes. We can all disagree
on this, and you know, and ultimately I'm sure there
(12:56):
are examples of similar dishes in various culinary and cultures
where it's like totally not weird for you to eat it.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Oh yeah, I mean what is weird in terms of
food is totally a matter of social and cultural expectations.
It's like what's familiar to us.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, So when I say it sounds weird to me,
it's weird because I'm imagining the Tudors eating this. But
this particular book includes references to such dishes as sliced
cow tongue, pie, boiled badger, boiled viper, swan with blood,
and entrail sauce.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Oh delicious.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
This one really gave my wife pause. Cow's utters in
mustard sauce. I'm not sure where like that one kind
of hits in various ways, like when it's the utters,
but then also the mustard sauce. I really have a
hard time picturing.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
This cow's utters in sweet and sour sauce I think
would work better.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And then also multiple peacock recipes, yes, peacocks.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Now wait, now that I'm thinking about it, why don't
any like these fast food chains have a dipping sauce
for your nuggets that is blood and entrail sauce.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I mean they could with the right market, you could
call it that and people would go nuts for it.
But these peacock recipes, oh my goodness. I think in
the past I'd run across examples of people eating peacocks
as a feast food, but I often forget about it
because I end up. You know, you see peacocks everywhere
they've spread. They've been introduced rather all over the world
from the Indian subcontinent, so most of you, I think
(14:31):
I've probably seen one. You know, they walk around the
males of the species, the peacocks, you know, look dazzling
with their feathers, and then of course you have the
pea hens, the females. More on the particulars in just
a second, but yes, recipes for this include the gilded peacock.
This is a sixteen sixty one recipe that calls for
(14:51):
the spit roasted bird to be covered with gold leaf
and recovered in the peacock's skin and feathers. After it's
been for the you butcher it, you set aside those
gorgeous feathers and its skin, and then you put it
all back together with gold leaf. Quote for recreation and
for magnificence. According to doctor John Wex, there's eighteen books
(15:14):
of the Secrets of Art in Nature from sixteen sixty one.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
That sounds like a book by like John d Or Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, it sounds like it would be alchemical in nature
and not about eating a peacock.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Not about how to have fun with peacock corpses.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense. If you
can eat the peacock, you want to admire the feathers. Yes,
so the pa foul is we may more accurately describe
these creatures consist of three different species. There are two
asiatic peacocks native to the Indian subcontinent, and there's also
a congo p fowl that is apparently actually not a
(15:51):
true pea fowl. The Indian pfowl is the key species
for our concerns here, notable for the splendid mating displays
made by the male peacocks that truly everyone has seen.
The bird was introduced as a novelty into Europe, traditionally
held as being introduced by the Macedonian general Alexander the
Great during the fourth century BCE, but something it might
(16:14):
have occurred earlier than that. It's an interesting bird in
its own right, and we could probably devote an entire
episode to it, no doubt, exploring its place, for example,
in the history of evolutionary theory, one of the many
animals that ends up being invoked in scientific discourse of
the day. Instead of all that, though, I want to
cut right to some interesting religious contexts for the peacock
(16:38):
from Indian traditions, and for this I turned once more
to Krishna's Sacred Animals of India. This is from Penguin Press.
I'm not going to go through everything that the author
shares here, but I want to hit some of the
key points. So first of all, the peacock. This is
not really religious at all, but the peacock is a
national bird of India. Getting into religious traditions, the peacock
(16:59):
is held does the animal form of the sky god Indra. Also,
it said that Indra granted the peacock its beautiful colors
after one of them extended its sale to hide him
during a battle with the demon king Ravna. The peacock
is an enemy of snakes and represents victory over evil tendencies.
And this is apparently based on real life because peacocks
(17:22):
in their natural habitat do eat small snakes. And of
course this reminds me a little bit of you know,
talking of what we've talked about concerning the kokatrice and
the basilisk.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Oh. I don't think I even mentioned this at the time,
but some sources say that the cockatrice the monster can
have a couple of enemies. One is the cry of
the rooster, so like the rooster's call can sort of
invalidate the cockatrice's magic or banish it. And then another
idea is that the weasel is the enemy of the
cockatrice and can defeat it.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
The peacock is also held to be the vehicle of
the war god Kartikia. The crown of Lord Krishna often
features peacock feathers. It's apparently just generally a common symbol
of beauty throughout Hindu literature, often associated with joy as
well as Rain and Krishna. The writer here not the
(18:13):
mythological figure, also mentions that some traditions hold that Sita,
the love of Rama, was born from the egg of
a pea hen. He also mentions that the peacock may
represent compassion and watchfulness in Buddhist traditions, and that in
Tibetan Buddhism there are also connotations of immortality which will
(18:34):
come back to in a second and a symbol for
the universal antidote against the poisonous human emotional states. And
in Jainism, the peacock feather may ward away evil and
then finally, he also mentions in passing that peacocks are
apparently mentioned in the Bible is an import of King Solomon.
Now during the medieval period in Europe, they were favorite
(18:55):
inclusions in menageries and gardens, becoming important in European heraldry,
textiles and art, and of course, they also came up
as a prized food item. And yet even as this
exotic bird is selected for the dinner table, it retains
its novel qualities as well as some of its supernatural
(19:17):
and symbolic qualities. So you know, I guess, you know,
on the medieval European table and you know, into Renaissance times,
it's like you can have it both ways, that the
animal can be I guess, both symbolic and delicious.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
So like if unicorns actually existed, you could take on
some of the symbolic I don't know, purity and holiness
of the unicorn by eating its flesh.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Maybe oh yeah, they would totally have spit roasted a unicorn. Now,
some select groups in India also historically ate the bird,
and we also have accounts that the ancient Romans enjoyed
peacock meat as well as the ostrich and various other
items in a Roman work titled on the subject of cooking,
(20:00):
a work that is attributed to a Roman by the
name of Apicius, though apparently there are two different Apiciuses
in the historical record that historians think this might have been.
So I'm not sure if we know with any degree
of accuracy, like who this was that wrote this? But
in on the subject of cooking. This is in translation,
(20:21):
of course, is stated entrees of peacock occupied the first rink,
provided they be dressed in such manner that the hard
and tough parts be tender. The second place in the
estimation of gourmets have dishes made of rabbit, third spiny lobster,
fourth comes chicken, and fifth young pig.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So according to this source, peacock is right at the
top if you cook it right. And you know modern
American mainstays of chicken and pig, like, that's just down
the list. That's after your rabbit and your spiny lobster.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Beef doesn't even make the list. No love for fish,
Where's my goat?
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Whoever Apicius was? The delicacies based on peacock tongues are
also attributed to him. But I wonder if even the
Romans ever considered such a tudor dish as listed by
Breverton in his book as redressed peacocks which seem alive,
and how to make them breathe fire through their mouth.
(21:29):
This is one of the listings from Tutor England that
he goes over it. So Basically this is this is
very similar to the gilded peacock. I'm assuming here it
amounts though to a complex First of all, you know,
butchering and then you know, spit roasting of said bird.
But then it's stuffed and mounted, and its skin and
(21:50):
its feathers are added back. And then on top of
everything else, they use some sort of of a fire
effect created via camphor, a waxy colorlesstance that burns at
a low temperature, So like some sort of little pyrotechnic
device inside the peacock's mouth so that as you serve
it, it is breathing fire.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Were peacock's thought to breathe fire in life? Or I
wonder what this is connecting to.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I mean, I guess it's just it's kind of like
lighting the candles on a birthday cake, right, or you know,
a flaming drink. You know, a little fire makes it
even more exciting. And so yeah, if you're going to
have an animal with its head on it, why not
have that head spitting fire?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Okay, yeah, blow out the peacock, honey. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Now this leads us to another aspect that we kind
of touched on very briefly. We mentioned how the Romans said, Okay,
peacock flesh is the best, but you got to dress
it right, you got to cook it right so that
you don't have to deal with the heart and the
tough parts. You can make those parts tender. There does
seem to be a lot of discussion about just how
tough peacock meat can be. And this gets into this
(22:56):
idea that you also see sort of reverberating through even
ancient literature, the idea that the peacock's flesh did not rot,
that it was incorruptible.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
This is getting more and more unicorn by the moment.
It is.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Really these are attributes you would expect to be applied
to the unicorn or something like that, and not a peacock,
which you know, it's like I grew up knowing people
who had peacocks wandering around their homes like it didn't
seem weird at all. It didn't seem like a magical creature,
you know. I mean, it's impressive, but not magical.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
To be clear, this is not true. Peacocks rot when
they die.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Right, right, But this idea seems to go back aways.
I've seen it attributed to Aristotle, but I don't believe
he ever directly addressed it, though I think there were
some later authors who then kind of like tried to
tried to claim that, oh, well, he was aware of
this belief, and perhaps he's somehow alluding to it. Writers
(23:53):
such as Plenty and Plutarch would have they also discussed
the bird's links to traditions of immortality.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
But where we really.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Find a firm example of this being discussed is in
the fifth century CE book on the City of God
against the Pagans, or the City of God, by Augustine
of Hippo. And I'm going to read for you hear
from the Marcus Dods translation, for who but God, the
(24:22):
creator of all things, has given to the flesh of
the peacock its antiseptic property. This property, when I first
heard of it, seemed to me incredible. But it happened
at Carthage that a bird of this kind was cooked
and served up to me, and taking a suitable slice
of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to be kept.
(24:44):
And when it had been kept as many days as
make any other flesh stinking, it was produced and set
before me and emitted no offensive smell. And after it
had been laid by for thirty days and more it
was still in the same state, and a year after
the same still except that it was a little more
(25:06):
shriveled and drier. Who gave to chaff such power to
freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such
power to warm that it ripens green fruit.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I don't think I understood that last sentence.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Well, he's tying it all into the power of God,
the creator, the chaff and the and the ripening of
green fruit. That's not directly involved with the peacock's flesh.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
But it's some context of theological observation. Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Right, And I have to say this may be the
single most impressive leftovers inspired theological argument or example of
all time, just hands down. I can't imagine that there's
a better one out there where like Augustine's Like, yeah,
I brought some food home from dinner and it did rot,
and a year later it's still good. What can I say?
(25:56):
Glory to the creator.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Imagine if you saw that video on when this was
of like the McDonald's burger, the wooden't rot that.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, I mean similar thing, right, Glory be to God.
But anyway, the peacock in large part due to this discussion,
but also you know, trailing off of other cultural and
religious connections. It becomes a symbol of not mere not
mere pride as you might expect from watching a peacock
(26:25):
stroll about, but of Christian eschatology, informed as well by
medieval ideas concerning their molting and the and also you know,
very real observations that they eat small snakes, and therefore
well maybe they're you know, they're killing and eating venomous serpents.
And so the peacock becomes a symbol of the resurrection
in early Christian art, you see it in early catacombs
(26:48):
and so forth.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And thus we shall dine upon it.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, I don't know, it's so interesting that you know,
a bird like this, you know, you know, it's very spectacular,
and it can take on all these additional meanings and
and so forth. But then also, you know, you come
down to it, it's like, let's put it on the
dinner table, let's make it look amazing, let's eat it.
I've never eaten peacock, but I would love to hear
(27:13):
from anyone out there who has, who can testify to
the corruptibility of its flash. But also just how does
it taste if prepared properly? What are your tips for
cooking peacock?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, if it's if it tends to be tougher than
your normal poultry like chicken or whatever. I would imagine
it's one of those things they do, like, you know,
a long cooking time on like maybe some kind of uh,
you know, peacock equivalent of cocoa van Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I don't even know where you go to get peacock
meat officially, because I mean it's not like you can't
go to like what a fud Rucker is in the
nineteen nineties and get a peacock burger like you could
get like an Ostrich burger apparently, but at any rate.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
I bet they got it at Walmart. All right, Well,
I wanted to come back to something I think we
alluded to a little bit in terms of extravagant meals
and performing meats. As you mentioned earlier, Rob, Yes, this
(28:18):
is the subject of ingastration, which is the culinary term
for stuffing one animal inside another. At this point, most
of you out there listening have probably heard of the
famous or infamous urducin, a three bird roast made of
a duck, a chicken, and a turkey, and I've seen
(28:40):
dispute about what order they are stuffed in. Now I
was reading that it's most often a duck stuffed inside
the body cavity of a chicken stuffed inside the body
cavity of a turkey. But sometimes it sounds like the
duck and chicken rolls are reversed and may just have
to do with how large each one you've got is.
But in most descriptions these birds are they're not stuffed
(29:02):
in whole with the bones at all. The bird carcasses
are fully deboned beforehand, so you take all the bones
out and just have the meat in the skin, and
then there's usually also some form of stuffing to pad
out the spaces in between.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I had to be reminded of this, but apparently my
brother in law made one of these years and years ago,
and the main surviving detail of it is that he
had to get up super early in the morning because
he did have to remove the bones from everything.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Deboning a whole poultry carcass is I have actually done
it before. It's a lot of work. Yeah, I'm sure
if you're an experienced butcher, it's you know, it's pretty easy.
But to my amateur hands. It was a task, I bet.
Though I have never made a turducan. This was just
a chicken.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I mean, I apparently ate of this tur duncan, but
this was a long time ago, and I have no
memories of what it might have tasted like.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
So the tra ducan is something that I suspect is
referenced for comedy value at least a thousand times as
often as it is actually eaten. Not only because for
you know, many people for whom it is not a
regular part of their dining find in gastration of funny concept. Also,
I suspect because the word turducan contains the word turd.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
That's true, It's just a funny sounding word.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Yes. Famously, the American football commentator John Madden talked about
the idea of a turduckan on some NFL event broadcasts
around Thanksgiving across the years. You know, I'm not a
football fan, so I knew nothing about this. I only
came across this because I was reading about it. But
I looked up some of these videos and it is
(30:40):
quite fun. He's Madden is talking about the true ducan
with an adorable combination of amusement and amazement. It's just like,
get a loo to this. I'm about to knock your
socks off. It's a chicken inside a turkey. And I
found this clip from a It's like some pre show
chatter for the Eagles versus the forty nine Ers game
(31:03):
on the Monday before Thanksgiving November two thousand and two,
and Robbie, I shared this video with you so hopefully
I can get your reaction to it. But this video
is one of the most like Year two thousand and
two things I've ever seen. So the announcer comes on
and they're like Monday night football pre Thanksgiving brought to
you by Budweiser, Brood Fresh in America, Touchstone Pictures, the
(31:26):
Hot Chit coming soon to theaters everywhere, and then there's
also an there's an ad for Radio Shack and then
an ad for Chrystler, and the tagline for Chrysler at
the time was love Equals Drive. Wow.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, I watched this video and yes, this was impressive.
I also am not a football fan. I know of
Madden from his many video games, but yeah, he gets
into it.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Literally, he made so many video games.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, yeah, prolific of time for that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Oh by the way, just important correction to what I
just said. JJ just chimed in because he watched the
video also to let us know that it was not
love equals drive. It was drive equals love. Though I
think by some principle of mathematics that works out to
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I think, so right right, sure, it's got it.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I don't know, mathematicians let us know. But also so
the funny thing about this video is that Madden is
extolling the virtues of the tru ducan, Like he explains
what it is. He's like, yeah, it's you know, you
put this bird inside this bird and it's so great.
But then he also demonstrates how a turducan is structured
(32:38):
by he like brings the camera over to this prepared
roasted turducan and then just rips it apart with his
hands to show all the layers.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Oh my goodness, somebody spent all day on that.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yeah. So who actually invented the turducan and win is
a matter of some dispute. The American Cajun and Creole
chef Paul Prudam at one point claimed he invented turducan
at a lodge in Wyoming at some point This probably
would have been in the nineteen sixties or maybe the
early seventies, though the first time he published his recipe
(33:10):
was in a cookbook in the eighties. And then a
couple of other Louisiana based chefs named Junior and Sammy
Herbert brothers who ran a butcher shop together in Louisiana.
They claimed they were the first to create it. So it's,
as far as I can tell, still in dispute when
the first authentic turducan was conceived. But part of the
problem with assigning credit for the invention of the turducan
(33:33):
is how close does a recipe have to be to count?
Because if you get a little looser in your criteria
and you just start looking for examples of birds stuffed
inside birds and cooked, examples start to go way back
hundreds or thousands of years into history. It's just the
question of who specifically did this combination in this order.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Well, Plus it also comes down to the question are
you talking about doubles are you talking about triples?
Speaker 3 (33:59):
That's right, So I mentioned the idea of stunt food earlier.
You know, the cock and trice clearly seems to me
to be a kind of stunt food. But stuffing meats
inside meats, stuffing whole animal carcasses inside other animal carcasses
and then cooking them. That seems to me to be
like the quintessential stunt food. Like whatever actual unique pleasures
(34:22):
lie in the eating of three different kinds of poultry
meat all layered together and then cooked as opposed to
just you know, served on their own separately, I think
it's hard to deny that the primary appeal of this
kind of thing is conceptual novelty. The novelty, the extravagance,
the expense, and the difficulty imagined in the preparation. It's
(34:45):
the idea that, like, you didn't have to do this,
but you did it anyway. And you know, that's an
interesting thing to think about in food preparation because you
could represent that appeal in more sympathetic and less sympathetic way.
So in our cultural context, a more sympathetic view would
be that it's like an expression of creativity by a cook,
(35:08):
a desire for a challenge, a desire to delight diners
and your guests by giving them something new, like you
may have had poultry before, but not like this. And
then a less sympathetic view in our cultural context is
that it's about like showing off. You're showing off your
skill if you yourself or the cook, or maybe if
(35:28):
you're hiring the cook or buying this thing. It's about
showing off your power and wealth. So I want to
keep that in mind while we turn to one of
the most interesting antique accounts of in gastration that I
came across. And this is a story that was in
a book I found about the evolution of the human
diet by a University of Edinburgh biologist to name Jonathan Silvertown.
(35:53):
So the book is called Dinner with Darwin, Food, Drink
and Evolution, published by the University of Chicago Press in
twin and so Silvertown tells the story of this particular
in gastration project as follows. So the year is sixty
three BCE. This would have been during the Roman Republican period.
(36:13):
And in sixty three BCE there was a banquet held
in honor of the Roman statesman Cicero, who is still
known today for being a great orator and rhetorician, you know,
great giver of speeches. But he wasn't just a you know,
it wasn't just style points. For Cicero He was also
a very important power player in Roman politics at the time.
(36:33):
The host of this banquet for Cicero was one of
the richest citizens of Rome, a consul named Servilius Rullus.
And allegedly, you know that it starts off with some
appetizers early courses of the feast that went over extremely well.
The guests were very happy and in fact they burst
into applause after the appetizer courses. But the real centerpiece
(36:55):
of the feast would be the porcus troyanis or what
French authors would later the bore a la troyenne the
Trojan pig. Now why would it be called that? Your
mind might already be jumping to the answer, But if
you stick with me for a second, the description goes
that this dish is brought out on a giant silver
(37:15):
plate that takes four slaves to carry. The plate is.
The plate is huge, and on it there is a
roasted bore with baskets of dates hanging from its tusks,
which are still attached. And then it's surrounded by delicate
little pastries made to look like a brood of little piglets.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
WHOA, it's already getting outrageous and we have all gotten
inside the pig.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
You haven't even gone in yet. Yeah. Then they cut
open the roast bore to reveal that inside it there
is a second roast bore, and then inside the second
roast bore a third, and so on and so on,
giving way to smaller and smaller animals until the final core.
You reach the core, you know, the center of the
death star. What's down there? It's a tiny, little cooked bird.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Now I enjoy cooking a challenging dish. But also this
is true for a lot of the dishes we've talked
about today, But for some reason, in this particular example,
I was just filled with horror imagining this dish made
by people who were not aware of germ theory and
did not have like time temperature charts for pasteurization. I'm
just feeling like that bird in the middle was not
(38:26):
cooked properly. Yeah, or if it was, everything else was
dry as heck. But anyway, so this is how you
get the name Trojan pig. As one Roman author tells us,
it was stuffed with smaller animals in the same way
that the Trojan horse of the Iliad was filled with
armed soldiers and I also like the implication that it
(38:47):
will launch a sneak attack on your body from the inside.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Well yeah, yeah, it sounds like it just might.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
By the way, so this is the way that Silvertown
tells the story in the book, but elsewhere I've seen
alternate accounts. Apparently there are multiple ancient texts that mention
versions of this dish, and alternate accounts of the Trojan
pig describe it as a roast bore stuffed with cased sausages,
which were said when you cut open the bore to
spill out of the hog like intestines delicious.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Okay, maybe it's more amusing if you're like closer to
your butchery culture.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
I guess, yeah, possibly so. In this book, the author
frames this within a discussion about the shifting pressures dictating
how we prepare food when our relationship to food resources changes.
You know, of course, with wild animals and for most humans,
for most of the history of our species, the primary
(39:44):
concern with food has just been making sure you have
enough access to the nutrients you need to survive. But
once humans get into a situation where there is what
feels like a dependable surplus of food, our attitude out
what food is for changes it becomes less about meeting
(40:04):
the metabolic energy needs of the body, and food can
be used for other things to achieve other important goals,
such as trying to boost social status. And I think
there's no doubt at all that in most cultures throughout
history there has been a social status benefit to being
a good host. That's like a I don't know if
(40:27):
I can say it's a cultural universal, but it's got
to be close to universal. Like being a good host
is widely recognized as a thing that makes you a
socially respectable person. And one of the ways you can
approach trying to gain a reputation as a good host
is by serving elaborate and impressive and delightful meals, not
only meeting your guest's energy needs, but beyond that giving
(40:49):
them goostatory pleasure, and then beyond that giving them novelty
in food, and then beyond that giving them excess just
for excess's sake, just to show them that you can
and you're willing to. So there's an interesting relationship here
that Silvertown points out as sort of a difference between
satisfying hunger and satisfying the need for status because hunger
(41:14):
is fundamentally hunger is both limited by some kind of
physical constraints on the body, but it's also insatiable in
the long term. So you can eat a meal, but
you can only eat so much until you're full. Even
if you've got a big appetite, you know there's going
to be a limit. And then also on the other end, eventually,
no matter how much you eat, your satiation will trend
(41:36):
down towards zero over time. So at some point, even
if you had a really big meal, you're going to
need to eat again. You meet the need, and then
overtime the need recurs. Pressure for social status, on the
other hand, can be subject to a positive feedback loop.
Silvertown Rights quote. My three bird roast raises my status
among my dinner guests, who then feel the need to reciprocate.
(41:59):
When everybody serving three bird roasts, I have become like
everyone else. So I go one better and show off
with a four bird roast. Four bird roasts become the
new norm, and so I have to go one better.
And you know, I was thinking about this and thinking
that they are actually different and more familiar ways This
can be acted out and socially understood. So we are
(42:20):
not all like Roman consuls or tutor British aristocrats jockeying
for political power. But the desire for status can manifest
to us in ways that seem more benign in our
cultural environment. So here's an example I'm thinking of. You
want to host a family Thanksgiving maybe, and you want
to make sure that the spread is really nice, so
(42:42):
that the people in your family and your friend group
who are attending will like you and will have a
good time, and will enjoy coming to your house at
the holidays and will want to spend time with you.
That is perfectly reasonable thing to want, and it feels
a lot less crass and cutthroat than the historical examples
you know of these, like Roman politicians. But I think
(43:04):
it's fair to say that this is still a way
of using food to boost our social status.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
I think I think that's a good point. I mean,
it's like we are social animals, like we cannot help
but engage in those currents, whether it is about the
grander game of you know, thrones in politics, or if
it is about a much simpler and maybe more wholesome
game of just appealing to friends in love.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
With right wanting to be liked and accepted by your
social circle, by your friends and family. Now to cite
a I don't want to judge too much, but a
potentially fine or potentially less wholesome feeling example from today.
Another variation is not actually physically hosting guests in person,
but like posting your impressive food creations on social media.
(43:52):
In that format, you don't actually have to go to
the trouble of hosting people, but you can still presumably
impress others and gain social status by digitally showing off
your turducan or whatever other impressive food creation on the gram.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Well, you know, it is one of those things that
I guess is kind of like doubly impressive, because not
only does it mean you can cook said dish, but
you also have the talent and skill to properly photograph
or film it. Those two skills don't always go hand
in hand.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Oh they don't. Yeah, yeah, I know. Food photography is
a real It's a thing people don't appreciate enough because
they consume like foo food photography all the time and
like don't realize how disgusting even a lot of really
good food looks. If you know the light conditions aren't
right and so forth. Yeah, But anyway, coming back to
the argument from this book, According to this author Silvertown,
(44:44):
this is why in a food surplus environment, where our
investments in food become more about promoting social status than
about simply satisfying the body's energy needs, there can be
a tendency to always try to go one better, to
keep one upping the social expectations, because the need for
status can have this this zero point adjusted to whatever
(45:08):
your cultural baseline is, which might feel to you like
it involves cramming seven chickens inside nine pigs for Thanksgiving
or whatever. But like you were saying, rob, it cuts
to a core biological reality about humans, which is that
we are not sharks. You know, we are a deeply
social species, and social reputation is nearly as important to
(45:30):
us as food. It's like barely under food in terms
of needs. It's core to our well being. And so
the desire to have a good reputation, to be liked
by friends and family, and to have you know, to
have positive social status, that that is something that it
cuts really deep to the human experience. It's a strong
(45:52):
need we have, and if you get in a cultural
situation where you feel like in order to meet those needs,
to meet that pressure, sure for for reputation and to
be liked and thought of as a good host, and
all that that you need to do increasingly impressive and
possibly even strange creations of food.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
That's you know, it can seem perfectly logical. It's just like,
this is what I've got to do.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, I mean it's I mean, this is the reason
why we have, you know, religious and mythological tales in
which it is it is stressed that you were you
were always good as a host because the people you
are entertaining they may seem like nobody, but they could
be gods in disguise, you know. Like that's how that's
how essential hosting is, uh to the human experience.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Now I want to sort of close things out in
maybe a less cerebral area. I want to talk very
briefly about tofurky because tofurky is also, I mean, I think, objectively,
a funny word. It makes me laugh anytime I see
a package of tofurkey at the store, and that alone
(46:58):
makes me want to buy it.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Can I do a ranking of words? Yeah, I'm gonna
say the least funny word is chicken. Turkey is a
funnier word than chicken. Tofurkey is a funnier word than turkey,
and turduck in is a funnier word than tofurkey.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yes, I think that ranking is solid, but if you're
not familiar with tofurke, it is a holiday meat substitute,
really a feast meat substitute in a limited way. It's
a blend of wheat, protein and tofu. According to the
website of the official Tofurky product, like the company Anyway,
(47:35):
began in nineteen eighty when a teacher and naturalist by
the name of Seth Tibbott made some from scratch Tempe
to share it with friends in Portland, and then like
the company takes off and he eventually gives the world
tofurkey in nineteen ninety five as a vegan holiday roast,
which I mean, you know, the mid nineties, Like that's
as you for a lot of people, like that's early
(47:56):
in vegan cooking. You know, that's a time period where
I feel like it's more likely to be the punchline
on a late night joke. But I guess that's also
the beauty of the word tofurky. It is just innately
funny and is therefore going to wind up the subject
of late night jokes. But essentially what we're talking about
here is, yeah, a vegan meat substitute loaf filled with stuffing.
(48:20):
So you know, it does connect to these various traditions
of big roasts and stuffed meats, but with this meat
free twist, I still prefer feet of meat, but still
I admire the toferki and it makes me think, like,
what additional twists on these traditions we might see in
the near future, even either with our already robust imitation
(48:41):
meat capabilities, which really have come a long way since
the mid nineties. Some phenomenal meat substitutes out there. I'm
a big fan of several of them. But then also
we have the ever potential future of vat grown meat.
I always hear conflicting things about how far that, how
far off that is in terms of feasibility, but maybe
(49:04):
not so far off in terms of just pure you
know meat spectacle. You know, like you could imagine that
grown whatever being like the extravagant centerpiece, because it's like,
you know, it's not at the point yet, you know,
where it can be rolled out to everyone.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
My God though, I mean the creator. Like, if you're
impressed by cramming together some crab legs and a turkey
to look like a face hug, or imagine what could
be done if you can actually like grow the meat
to a specified mold, you can make all kinds of things,
and that could also be an interesting uh yeah, like
a an extravagant kind of You know, it's probably not
(49:41):
cheap to do that, but if you really want to
impress your guests, it's like here, you're you're going to
eat a I don't know, a delicious unicorn head.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
I mean, what do meats and up tasting like when
they are still on some level biologically meat, but they're
divorced from the concept of living animals and are subject
to human tinkering and engineering, Like you know, what strange
new tastes and forms are possible? I mean, I mean,
I guess we're pointing out that to certainly, to a
large extent, humans have already manipulated the taste and form
(50:14):
of various meats in their domesticated meat animals, but you know,
this would just take it to the next level potentially,
mm hmm. It depends, I guess to what extent you
feel like you have to stay in line with the
traditions and to what extent you can stray away from them.
But who knows, there could come a time when on
(50:35):
the same table you could serve both cock and trice
and cock a trice right there next to each other
on silver bladders.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Yeah. So, hey, folks out there, if you're listening and
you work in the in the lab grown meatfield, right
in and let us know, like how feasible is this?
Could you grow a cockatrice to eat?
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah, and the rest of you out there are pro chefs,
amateur chefs, et cetera. Right in with your your thoughts
and experiences with any of the recipes we've discussed in
this episode, we'd love to hear from you. Send your
food pictures as well.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
We'll have a look up, especially if they look disgusting
because of the lighting.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
We will not judge you on that count. A Right,
We're gonna go ahead and close out this episode, but
we'll just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to send
us your interesting holiday creations, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hi, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, what's the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and we have another vault episode
for you. Since this is a holiday week for us,
this is going to be a Monstrous Feast, which originally
published eleven, twenty one, twenty twenty four. So yes, this
is our this is our feast themed episode, and it's
going to get into some questionable recent inventions of the
(00:30):
culinary variety and also some monstrous dishes of the past.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. Hey, what are
we talking about today.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Rob, Oh, we're getting into feasting season here, Joe. So
we're going to do what we've done in the past,
devote an episode to food, but not just you know,
just any food. In the past, we've talked about dangerous foods.
We did several episodes on that. You can find those
if you go back into the archives. But this time
we're going to be talking particularly about some various feast dishes,
(01:20):
some outrageous feast dishes, and then also some sort of
related tangential subject matter that's sort of swirling around those dishes.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Now, I am salivating at the thought of the beauties
and the grotesqueries to follow.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, historic dishes of over indulgence, you might call them,
and such dishes exist throughout the history of human feasting.
As long as human populations have even periodically experienced surplus
and or inequality, there's been room for dishes that simply
go above and beyond what seems reasonable. Decadent delicacies occupied
(01:54):
the tables of the ancient Romans. We'll mention a few,
and of course still to this day we find such
dishes on our tables.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Okay, but I know you got crankin' on this topic
because you were interested in one particular example from history, right.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
That's right, one that you know I think I've had
like a vague familiarity with for a long time because
I feel like I've seen depictions of it before. I'm
really struggling to figure out if I've actually seen a
depiction of this in a film or TV show. But
it's possible because it's a great way to sort of
(02:30):
center what's going on in your setting. But yeah, we're
going to turn to fifteenth century Europe, So the Middle
Ages are giving way to the first stirrings of the Renaissance,
and it's just prime time to sew a suckling pig
and a chicken together and serve it to a bunch
of nobles and royals. A lot of great things come
(02:51):
out of the Renaissance, yes, but there are some. There
are some real clunkers that come out of it as well.
And this and this, I don't know. This could be
one of them. I have not tried it, I will
not be trying it, but it is not impossible that
some of you out there have tried it. The addition
question is the cock and trice not to be confused
(03:11):
with another word that you may find not in a
menu from a tutor England, but more likely in a bestiary.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
That's right, So this other word is cock a trice
rather than cock en trice. It's easy to confuse the two.
They are phonetically similar, spelled similarly, but different things altogether.
Now I'm not going to go extremely deep here because
the cockatrice subject will have some overlap with our past
discussions of the mythical monster known as the basilisk. These
(03:41):
creatures were in many cases, not all, but in many
cases treated as the same thing. A cockatrice is sort
of a loosely defined monster, usually combining Avian and reptilian
features or associations. Sometimes it is kind of straightforwardly a wivern.
It's like a dragon with two legs, no little t
(04:03):
rex arms, just the two legs and then two wings,
and then a rooster's head. It appears in this form
or roughly this form in some medieval manuscripts and some heraldry,
but in other cases it's described as a kind of
fantastically venomous serpent, or as a serpent that hatches from
(04:24):
a cock's egg, sometimes after like a cock egg, is
incubated by a reptile or a toad. Generally, a cockatrice
is bad news. It is a venomous monster or a
monster that kills everything around it. Though there is an
interesting literary history of this word, because if you go
(04:46):
reading the King James translation of the Bible, you will
find lots of references to the cockatrice as a kind
of beast or venomous monster. A couple of examples I
dug up. One is from the Book of Isaiah, chapter
fifty nine, verses four to five, which say none calleth
for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth. They trust in
(05:07):
vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice eggs and weave the spider's web. He
that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is
crushed breaketh out into a viper. Common theme you will
get in some of the Old Testament books of the prophets, is,
(05:28):
you know, comparing wickedness and sin and lack of moral
virtue to venomous animals and predatory animals, dangerous beasts.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
So no hatching cockatrice eggs. That's what I'm taking for
the scripture.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
That's not a good thing to do. You bring forth iniquity.
Another good one I found just this one was a
little pithier. This is from the Book of Jeremiah, chapter eight,
verse seventeen, again the King James translation. It says, for behold,
I will send serpents cockatrices among you, which will not
be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Oh wow, let's say to the point.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
They shall bite you. Now. The word cockatrice does not
appear in later translations of the Bible that are better
informed about what the original Greek and Hebrew words that
are being translated usually mean. The English usage of cockatrice
in the Bible traces back to John Wickliffe's English translation
of the Old Testament, in which a Hebrew word that
(06:29):
probably originally referred to like a snake of venomous reptile
is taken as referring to this strange monster which was
already sort of in consciousness, in part derived from stories
that go back to plenty of the Elder and I
think we've actually talked about these stories before in our
episodes on the Basilisk. But the cockatrice also has some
(06:49):
interesting etymological confusion in its history because the English word
cockatrice is recorded as far back as Late Middle English.
It's derived from an Old French term cockatrice, which in
turn comes from the Latin calcatrix. So it's not actually
related to the English word or the French word cock,
(07:12):
which meaning like you know, a rooster, which that's the
imagery we see in like this heraldry, where it's a
dragon with a rooster's head or somehow a cock's egg
that is hatched in conjunction with reptile interference. Instead, it
goes back to the Latin calcatrix, which means she who treads.
The Latin verb here is calcare, meaning to tread, So
(07:34):
a calcatrix is a female entity who treads. So there's
some more word confusion for you, but the main point
being that a cockatrice is a monster and a cockin
trice is something completely different. It is the food that
we're about to talk about.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, and I can't promise that the word is just
going to get any easier to digest, but yeah, the
cock and trice, to be clear, is a composite dish.
So in the front you have a suckling pig and
in the back a turkey or capon. Capon is a
neutered male chicken. So the result is a feast item
of intrigue, as if the folks present for the meal
(08:12):
are being served not an animal of the mundane world,
but rather some fantastic hybrid that you know belongs, perhaps
in a bestiary alongside the cock a trice.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yeah, make you monsters out of our food, a tradition
that is not entirely gone. By the way, I'm sure
many people listening have seen like viral images of this
sort that get shared around the internet. One that very
much sticks in my mind is whoever first had the
idea to make a face hugger from the Alien series
out of like a turkey's body with some crab legs
(08:45):
on the side, and then a tail made out of
like a stuffed sausage.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, he's send me that photo. It's quite horrifying.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, it makes you want to eat them, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
And you know even you know, vegans and vegetari get
in on the action as well. I know in my
household it has become a tradition. On Halloween we make
a dish that is known by a few different names.
You and I, I think both know it as feet
of meat. It has also been called feet loaf. I
know Amy Sedaris calls it as such, but essentially it
(09:18):
is meat loafer. In our case, we was like, you know,
imitation meat that takes the form of one or two
disembodied bloody feet.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Beautiful. That's so nice.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So you know, I can't be too judging about all
this because I totally do it as well. Now, as
for the cockin trice here, I looked up some more
info on this in a book from Terry Breverton called
The tutor kitchen, and he goes into a little more
detail here mentions that the way you make one of
(09:50):
these things is that you first of all, you of
course butcher the two animals in question, and then once
you've butchered them, you know you've removed everything. You know,
you don't need to be part of the finished meal,
you know how butchering works. You stitch these together, then
you stuff it as you would often stuff, you know,
various feast items, as turkeys are still stuffed to this day,
(10:13):
you know, for Thanksgiving in America. And then you roast
it on a spit per, you know, the usual treatment
of the day. Now. Originally the dish, according to Breverton,
was known as cocka gris in this or perhaps catt agris,
and this is combining the words for cock and gris
(10:36):
a suckling pig. That being said, it does I mean,
I couldn't find much where people are really talking about
the the the comparison between these two words. It seems
to me that if the word for the monster cock
a trice is at all in some form like floating
around in one's vocabulary, then cock in trice is some
(10:58):
sort of an allusion to that but I couldn't find
any hard answers on that. There are also various other
spellings for the food item here the cock and trice,
as well as fifteenth century recipes that lay out the
steps to produce one. And this has long been a novelty.
It was a novelty when it was served on the
(11:19):
tables and Tutor England. And you can look around. You
can find various videos online of modern chefs and you know,
amateur chefs and streamers recreating it for entertainment purposes and
for exploration purposes, like there's nothing you know, there's nothing
you know you know off the board occurring in the
creation of this dish. I was looking around at various
(11:43):
people that were either talking directly about it or sometimes
just invoking it. As an example of the latter, I
saw a work by a writer by the name of
Karen Robber who described or raper, who describes it as
performing meat, which I thought was an interesting phrase, like
the meat eat in this case is not just here
for your consumption, one would assume it is also supposed
(12:05):
to taste good. But on top of that, it is
like the sheer performance of the presentation, which you know
that's gonna be president a lot of meals, but like
it becomes part of the forefront in a case like this.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah. I might have some different terminology that we could
apply to this category later in the episode, but I'd
say I primarily think of this as stunt food.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Stunt food is good.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, Yeah, it's food that's not just to be eaten,
it's also to be admired as an act.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yes. So, Reverenson's book contains numerous other, at least from
my vantage point, strange Tutor dishes. We can all disagree
on this, and you know, and ultimately I'm sure there
(12:56):
are examples of similar dishes in various culinary and cultures
where it's like totally not weird for you to eat it.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Oh yeah, I mean what is weird in terms of
food is totally a matter of social and cultural expectations.
It's like what's familiar to us.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, So when I say it sounds weird to me,
it's weird because I'm imagining the Tudors eating this. But
this particular book includes references to such dishes as sliced
cow tongue, pie, boiled badger, boiled viper, swan with blood,
and entrail sauce.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Oh delicious.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
This one really gave my wife pause. Cow's utters in
mustard sauce. I'm not sure where like that one kind
of hits in various ways, like when it's the utters,
but then also the mustard sauce. I really have a
hard time picturing.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
This cow's utters in sweet and sour sauce I think
would work better.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And then also multiple peacock recipes, yes, peacocks.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Now wait, now that I'm thinking about it, why don't
any like these fast food chains have a dipping sauce
for your nuggets that is blood and entrail sauce.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I mean they could with the right market, you could
call it that and people would go nuts for it.
But these peacock recipes, oh my goodness. I think in
the past I'd run across examples of people eating peacocks
as a feast food, but I often forget about it
because I end up. You know, you see peacocks everywhere
they've spread. They've been introduced rather all over the world
from the Indian subcontinent, so most of you, I think
(14:31):
I've probably seen one. You know, they walk around the
males of the species, the peacocks, you know, look dazzling
with their feathers, and then of course you have the
pea hens, the females. More on the particulars in just
a second, but yes, recipes for this include the gilded peacock.
This is a sixteen sixty one recipe that calls for
(14:51):
the spit roasted bird to be covered with gold leaf
and recovered in the peacock's skin and feathers. After it's
been for the you butcher it, you set aside those
gorgeous feathers and its skin, and then you put it
all back together with gold leaf. Quote for recreation and
for magnificence. According to doctor John Wex, there's eighteen books
(15:14):
of the Secrets of Art in Nature from sixteen sixty one.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
That sounds like a book by like John d Or Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, it sounds like it would be alchemical in nature
and not about eating a peacock.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Not about how to have fun with peacock corpses.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense. If you
can eat the peacock, you want to admire the feathers. Yes,
so the pa foul is we may more accurately describe
these creatures consist of three different species. There are two
asiatic peacocks native to the Indian subcontinent, and there's also
a congo p fowl that is apparently actually not a
(15:51):
true pea fowl. The Indian pfowl is the key species
for our concerns here, notable for the splendid mating displays
made by the male peacocks that truly everyone has seen.
The bird was introduced as a novelty into Europe, traditionally
held as being introduced by the Macedonian general Alexander the
Great during the fourth century BCE, but something it might
(16:14):
have occurred earlier than that. It's an interesting bird in
its own right, and we could probably devote an entire
episode to it, no doubt, exploring its place, for example,
in the history of evolutionary theory, one of the many
animals that ends up being invoked in scientific discourse of
the day. Instead of all that, though, I want to
cut right to some interesting religious contexts for the peacock
(16:38):
from Indian traditions, and for this I turned once more
to Krishna's Sacred Animals of India. This is from Penguin Press.
I'm not going to go through everything that the author
shares here, but I want to hit some of the
key points. So first of all, the peacock. This is
not really religious at all, but the peacock is a
national bird of India. Getting into religious traditions, the peacock
(16:59):
is held does the animal form of the sky god Indra. Also,
it said that Indra granted the peacock its beautiful colors
after one of them extended its sale to hide him
during a battle with the demon king Ravna. The peacock
is an enemy of snakes and represents victory over evil tendencies.
And this is apparently based on real life because peacocks
(17:22):
in their natural habitat do eat small snakes. And of
course this reminds me a little bit of you know,
talking of what we've talked about concerning the kokatrice and
the basilisk.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Oh. I don't think I even mentioned this at the time,
but some sources say that the cockatrice the monster can
have a couple of enemies. One is the cry of
the rooster, so like the rooster's call can sort of
invalidate the cockatrice's magic or banish it. And then another
idea is that the weasel is the enemy of the
cockatrice and can defeat it.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
The peacock is also held to be the vehicle of
the war god Kartikia. The crown of Lord Krishna often
features peacock feathers. It's apparently just generally a common symbol
of beauty throughout Hindu literature, often associated with joy as
well as Rain and Krishna. The writer here not the
(18:13):
mythological figure, also mentions that some traditions hold that Sita,
the love of Rama, was born from the egg of
a pea hen. He also mentions that the peacock may
represent compassion and watchfulness in Buddhist traditions, and that in
Tibetan Buddhism there are also connotations of immortality which will
(18:34):
come back to in a second and a symbol for
the universal antidote against the poisonous human emotional states. And
in Jainism, the peacock feather may ward away evil and
then finally, he also mentions in passing that peacocks are
apparently mentioned in the Bible is an import of King Solomon.
Now during the medieval period in Europe, they were favorite
(18:55):
inclusions in menageries and gardens, becoming important in European heraldry,
textiles and art, and of course, they also came up
as a prized food item. And yet even as this
exotic bird is selected for the dinner table, it retains
its novel qualities as well as some of its supernatural
(19:17):
and symbolic qualities. So you know, I guess, you know,
on the medieval European table and you know, into Renaissance times,
it's like you can have it both ways, that the
animal can be I guess, both symbolic and delicious.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
So like if unicorns actually existed, you could take on
some of the symbolic I don't know, purity and holiness
of the unicorn by eating its flesh.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Maybe oh yeah, they would totally have spit roasted a unicorn. Now,
some select groups in India also historically ate the bird,
and we also have accounts that the ancient Romans enjoyed
peacock meat as well as the ostrich and various other
items in a Roman work titled on the subject of cooking,
(20:00):
a work that is attributed to a Roman by the
name of Apicius, though apparently there are two different Apiciuses
in the historical record that historians think this might have been.
So I'm not sure if we know with any degree
of accuracy, like who this was that wrote this? But
in on the subject of cooking. This is in translation,
(20:21):
of course, is stated entrees of peacock occupied the first rink,
provided they be dressed in such manner that the hard
and tough parts be tender. The second place in the
estimation of gourmets have dishes made of rabbit, third spiny lobster,
fourth comes chicken, and fifth young pig.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So according to this source, peacock is right at the
top if you cook it right. And you know modern
American mainstays of chicken and pig, like, that's just down
the list. That's after your rabbit and your spiny lobster.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Beef doesn't even make the list. No love for fish,
Where's my goat?
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Whoever Apicius was? The delicacies based on peacock tongues are
also attributed to him. But I wonder if even the
Romans ever considered such a tudor dish as listed by
Breverton in his book as redressed peacocks which seem alive,
and how to make them breathe fire through their mouth.
(21:29):
This is one of the listings from Tutor England that
he goes over it. So Basically this is this is
very similar to the gilded peacock. I'm assuming here it
amounts though to a complex First of all, you know,
butchering and then you know, spit roasting of said bird.
But then it's stuffed and mounted, and its skin and
(21:50):
its feathers are added back. And then on top of
everything else, they use some sort of of a fire
effect created via camphor, a waxy colorlesstance that burns at
a low temperature, So like some sort of little pyrotechnic
device inside the peacock's mouth so that as you serve
it, it is breathing fire.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Were peacock's thought to breathe fire in life? Or I
wonder what this is connecting to.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I mean, I guess it's just it's kind of like
lighting the candles on a birthday cake, right, or you know,
a flaming drink. You know, a little fire makes it
even more exciting. And so yeah, if you're going to
have an animal with its head on it, why not
have that head spitting fire?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Okay, yeah, blow out the peacock, honey. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Now this leads us to another aspect that we kind
of touched on very briefly. We mentioned how the Romans said, Okay,
peacock flesh is the best, but you got to dress
it right, you got to cook it right so that
you don't have to deal with the heart and the
tough parts. You can make those parts tender. There does
seem to be a lot of discussion about just how
tough peacock meat can be. And this gets into this
(22:56):
idea that you also see sort of reverberating through even
ancient literature, the idea that the peacock's flesh did not rot,
that it was incorruptible.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
This is getting more and more unicorn by the moment.
It is.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Really these are attributes you would expect to be applied
to the unicorn or something like that, and not a peacock,
which you know, it's like I grew up knowing people
who had peacocks wandering around their homes like it didn't
seem weird at all. It didn't seem like a magical creature,
you know. I mean, it's impressive, but not magical.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
To be clear, this is not true. Peacocks rot when
they die.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Right, right, But this idea seems to go back aways.
I've seen it attributed to Aristotle, but I don't believe
he ever directly addressed it, though I think there were
some later authors who then kind of like tried to
tried to claim that, oh, well, he was aware of
this belief, and perhaps he's somehow alluding to it. Writers
(23:53):
such as Plenty and Plutarch would have they also discussed
the bird's links to traditions of immortality.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
But where we really.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Find a firm example of this being discussed is in
the fifth century CE book on the City of God
against the Pagans, or the City of God, by Augustine
of Hippo. And I'm going to read for you hear
from the Marcus Dods translation, for who but God, the
(24:22):
creator of all things, has given to the flesh of
the peacock its antiseptic property. This property, when I first
heard of it, seemed to me incredible. But it happened
at Carthage that a bird of this kind was cooked
and served up to me, and taking a suitable slice
of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to be kept.
(24:44):
And when it had been kept as many days as
make any other flesh stinking, it was produced and set
before me and emitted no offensive smell. And after it
had been laid by for thirty days and more it
was still in the same state, and a year after
the same still except that it was a little more
(25:06):
shriveled and drier. Who gave to chaff such power to
freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such
power to warm that it ripens green fruit.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I don't think I understood that last sentence.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Well, he's tying it all into the power of God,
the creator, the chaff and the and the ripening of
green fruit. That's not directly involved with the peacock's flesh.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
But it's some context of theological observation. Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Right, And I have to say this may be the
single most impressive leftovers inspired theological argument or example of
all time, just hands down. I can't imagine that there's
a better one out there where like Augustine's Like, yeah,
I brought some food home from dinner and it did rot,
and a year later it's still good. What can I say?
(25:56):
Glory to the creator.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Imagine if you saw that video on when this was
of like the McDonald's burger, the wooden't rot that.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, I mean similar thing, right, Glory be to God.
But anyway, the peacock in large part due to this discussion,
but also you know, trailing off of other cultural and
religious connections. It becomes a symbol of not mere not
mere pride as you might expect from watching a peacock
(26:25):
stroll about, but of Christian eschatology, informed as well by
medieval ideas concerning their molting and the and also you know,
very real observations that they eat small snakes, and therefore
well maybe they're you know, they're killing and eating venomous serpents.
And so the peacock becomes a symbol of the resurrection
in early Christian art, you see it in early catacombs
(26:48):
and so forth.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And thus we shall dine upon it.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, I don't know, it's so interesting that you know,
a bird like this, you know, you know, it's very spectacular,
and it can take on all these additional meanings and
and so forth. But then also, you know, you come
down to it, it's like, let's put it on the
dinner table, let's make it look amazing, let's eat it.
I've never eaten peacock, but I would love to hear
(27:13):
from anyone out there who has, who can testify to
the corruptibility of its flash. But also just how does
it taste if prepared properly? What are your tips for
cooking peacock?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, if it's if it tends to be tougher than
your normal poultry like chicken or whatever. I would imagine
it's one of those things they do, like, you know,
a long cooking time on like maybe some kind of uh,
you know, peacock equivalent of cocoa van Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I don't even know where you go to get peacock
meat officially, because I mean it's not like you can't
go to like what a fud Rucker is in the
nineteen nineties and get a peacock burger like you could
get like an Ostrich burger apparently, but at any rate.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
I bet they got it at Walmart. All right, Well,
I wanted to come back to something I think we
alluded to a little bit in terms of extravagant meals
and performing meats. As you mentioned earlier, Rob, Yes, this
(28:18):
is the subject of ingastration, which is the culinary term
for stuffing one animal inside another. At this point, most
of you out there listening have probably heard of the
famous or infamous urducin, a three bird roast made of
a duck, a chicken, and a turkey, and I've seen
(28:40):
dispute about what order they are stuffed in. Now I
was reading that it's most often a duck stuffed inside
the body cavity of a chicken stuffed inside the body
cavity of a turkey. But sometimes it sounds like the
duck and chicken rolls are reversed and may just have
to do with how large each one you've got is.
But in most descriptions these birds are they're not stuffed
(29:02):
in whole with the bones at all. The bird carcasses
are fully deboned beforehand, so you take all the bones
out and just have the meat in the skin, and
then there's usually also some form of stuffing to pad
out the spaces in between.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I had to be reminded of this, but apparently my
brother in law made one of these years and years ago,
and the main surviving detail of it is that he
had to get up super early in the morning because
he did have to remove the bones from everything.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Deboning a whole poultry carcass is I have actually done
it before. It's a lot of work. Yeah, I'm sure
if you're an experienced butcher, it's you know, it's pretty easy.
But to my amateur hands. It was a task, I bet.
Though I have never made a turducan. This was just
a chicken.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I mean, I apparently ate of this tur duncan, but
this was a long time ago, and I have no
memories of what it might have tasted like.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
So the tra ducan is something that I suspect is
referenced for comedy value at least a thousand times as
often as it is actually eaten. Not only because for
you know, many people for whom it is not a
regular part of their dining find in gastration of funny concept. Also,
I suspect because the word turducan contains the word turd.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
That's true, It's just a funny sounding word.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Yes. Famously, the American football commentator John Madden talked about
the idea of a turduckan on some NFL event broadcasts
around Thanksgiving across the years. You know, I'm not a
football fan, so I knew nothing about this. I only
came across this because I was reading about it. But
I looked up some of these videos and it is
(30:40):
quite fun. He's Madden is talking about the true ducan
with an adorable combination of amusement and amazement. It's just like,
get a loo to this. I'm about to knock your
socks off. It's a chicken inside a turkey. And I
found this clip from a It's like some pre show
chatter for the Eagles versus the forty nine Ers game
(31:03):
on the Monday before Thanksgiving November two thousand and two,
and Robbie, I shared this video with you so hopefully
I can get your reaction to it. But this video
is one of the most like Year two thousand and
two things I've ever seen. So the announcer comes on
and they're like Monday night football pre Thanksgiving brought to
you by Budweiser, Brood Fresh in America, Touchstone Pictures, the
(31:26):
Hot Chit coming soon to theaters everywhere, and then there's
also an there's an ad for Radio Shack and then
an ad for Chrystler, and the tagline for Chrysler at
the time was love Equals Drive. Wow.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, I watched this video and yes, this was impressive.
I also am not a football fan. I know of
Madden from his many video games, but yeah, he gets
into it.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Literally, he made so many video games.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, yeah, prolific of time for that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Oh by the way, just important correction to what I
just said. JJ just chimed in because he watched the
video also to let us know that it was not
love equals drive. It was drive equals love. Though I
think by some principle of mathematics that works out to
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I think, so right right, sure, it's got it.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I don't know, mathematicians let us know. But also so
the funny thing about this video is that Madden is
extolling the virtues of the tru ducan, Like he explains
what it is. He's like, yeah, it's you know, you
put this bird inside this bird and it's so great.
But then he also demonstrates how a turducan is structured
(32:38):
by he like brings the camera over to this prepared
roasted turducan and then just rips it apart with his
hands to show all the layers.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Oh my goodness, somebody spent all day on that.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yeah. So who actually invented the turducan and win is
a matter of some dispute. The American Cajun and Creole
chef Paul Prudam at one point claimed he invented turducan
at a lodge in Wyoming at some point This probably
would have been in the nineteen sixties or maybe the
early seventies, though the first time he published his recipe
(33:10):
was in a cookbook in the eighties. And then a
couple of other Louisiana based chefs named Junior and Sammy
Herbert brothers who ran a butcher shop together in Louisiana.
They claimed they were the first to create it. So it's,
as far as I can tell, still in dispute when
the first authentic turducan was conceived. But part of the
problem with assigning credit for the invention of the turducan
(33:33):
is how close does a recipe have to be to count?
Because if you get a little looser in your criteria
and you just start looking for examples of birds stuffed
inside birds and cooked, examples start to go way back
hundreds or thousands of years into history. It's just the
question of who specifically did this combination in this order.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Well, Plus it also comes down to the question are
you talking about doubles are you talking about triples?
Speaker 3 (33:59):
That's right, So I mentioned the idea of stunt food earlier.
You know, the cock and trice clearly seems to me
to be a kind of stunt food. But stuffing meats
inside meats, stuffing whole animal carcasses inside other animal carcasses
and then cooking them. That seems to me to be
like the quintessential stunt food. Like whatever actual unique pleasures
(34:22):
lie in the eating of three different kinds of poultry
meat all layered together and then cooked as opposed to
just you know, served on their own separately, I think
it's hard to deny that the primary appeal of this
kind of thing is conceptual novelty. The novelty, the extravagance,
the expense, and the difficulty imagined in the preparation. It's
(34:45):
the idea that, like, you didn't have to do this,
but you did it anyway. And you know, that's an
interesting thing to think about in food preparation because you
could represent that appeal in more sympathetic and less sympathetic way.
So in our cultural context, a more sympathetic view would
be that it's like an expression of creativity by a cook,
(35:08):
a desire for a challenge, a desire to delight diners
and your guests by giving them something new, like you
may have had poultry before, but not like this. And
then a less sympathetic view in our cultural context is
that it's about like showing off. You're showing off your
skill if you yourself or the cook, or maybe if
(35:28):
you're hiring the cook or buying this thing. It's about
showing off your power and wealth. So I want to
keep that in mind while we turn to one of
the most interesting antique accounts of in gastration that I
came across. And this is a story that was in
a book I found about the evolution of the human
diet by a University of Edinburgh biologist to name Jonathan Silvertown.
(35:53):
So the book is called Dinner with Darwin, Food, Drink
and Evolution, published by the University of Chicago Press in
twin and so Silvertown tells the story of this particular
in gastration project as follows. So the year is sixty
three BCE. This would have been during the Roman Republican period.
(36:13):
And in sixty three BCE there was a banquet held
in honor of the Roman statesman Cicero, who is still
known today for being a great orator and rhetorician, you know,
great giver of speeches. But he wasn't just a you know,
it wasn't just style points. For Cicero He was also
a very important power player in Roman politics at the time.
(36:33):
The host of this banquet for Cicero was one of
the richest citizens of Rome, a consul named Servilius Rullus.
And allegedly, you know that it starts off with some
appetizers early courses of the feast that went over extremely well.
The guests were very happy and in fact they burst
into applause after the appetizer courses. But the real centerpiece
(36:55):
of the feast would be the porcus troyanis or what
French authors would later the bore a la troyenne the
Trojan pig. Now why would it be called that? Your
mind might already be jumping to the answer, But if
you stick with me for a second, the description goes
that this dish is brought out on a giant silver
(37:15):
plate that takes four slaves to carry. The plate is.
The plate is huge, and on it there is a
roasted bore with baskets of dates hanging from its tusks,
which are still attached. And then it's surrounded by delicate
little pastries made to look like a brood of little piglets.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
WHOA, it's already getting outrageous and we have all gotten
inside the pig.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
You haven't even gone in yet. Yeah. Then they cut
open the roast bore to reveal that inside it there
is a second roast bore, and then inside the second
roast bore a third, and so on and so on,
giving way to smaller and smaller animals until the final core.
You reach the core, you know, the center of the
death star. What's down there? It's a tiny, little cooked bird.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Now I enjoy cooking a challenging dish. But also this
is true for a lot of the dishes we've talked
about today, But for some reason, in this particular example,
I was just filled with horror imagining this dish made
by people who were not aware of germ theory and
did not have like time temperature charts for pasteurization. I'm
just feeling like that bird in the middle was not
(38:26):
cooked properly. Yeah, or if it was, everything else was
dry as heck. But anyway, so this is how you
get the name Trojan pig. As one Roman author tells us,
it was stuffed with smaller animals in the same way
that the Trojan horse of the Iliad was filled with
armed soldiers and I also like the implication that it
(38:47):
will launch a sneak attack on your body from the inside.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Well yeah, yeah, it sounds like it just might.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
By the way, so this is the way that Silvertown
tells the story in the book, but elsewhere I've seen
alternate accounts. Apparently there are multiple ancient texts that mention
versions of this dish, and alternate accounts of the Trojan
pig describe it as a roast bore stuffed with cased sausages,
which were said when you cut open the bore to
spill out of the hog like intestines delicious.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Okay, maybe it's more amusing if you're like closer to
your butchery culture.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
I guess, yeah, possibly so. In this book, the author
frames this within a discussion about the shifting pressures dictating
how we prepare food when our relationship to food resources changes.
You know, of course, with wild animals and for most humans,
for most of the history of our species, the primary
(39:44):
concern with food has just been making sure you have
enough access to the nutrients you need to survive. But
once humans get into a situation where there is what
feels like a dependable surplus of food, our attitude out
what food is for changes it becomes less about meeting
(40:04):
the metabolic energy needs of the body, and food can
be used for other things to achieve other important goals,
such as trying to boost social status. And I think
there's no doubt at all that in most cultures throughout
history there has been a social status benefit to being
a good host. That's like a I don't know if
(40:27):
I can say it's a cultural universal, but it's got
to be close to universal. Like being a good host
is widely recognized as a thing that makes you a
socially respectable person. And one of the ways you can
approach trying to gain a reputation as a good host
is by serving elaborate and impressive and delightful meals, not
only meeting your guest's energy needs, but beyond that giving
(40:49):
them goostatory pleasure, and then beyond that giving them novelty
in food, and then beyond that giving them excess just
for excess's sake, just to show them that you can
and you're willing to. So there's an interesting relationship here
that Silvertown points out as sort of a difference between
satisfying hunger and satisfying the need for status because hunger
(41:14):
is fundamentally hunger is both limited by some kind of
physical constraints on the body, but it's also insatiable in
the long term. So you can eat a meal, but
you can only eat so much until you're full. Even
if you've got a big appetite, you know there's going
to be a limit. And then also on the other end, eventually,
no matter how much you eat, your satiation will trend
(41:36):
down towards zero over time. So at some point, even
if you had a really big meal, you're going to
need to eat again. You meet the need, and then
overtime the need recurs. Pressure for social status, on the
other hand, can be subject to a positive feedback loop.
Silvertown Rights quote. My three bird roast raises my status
among my dinner guests, who then feel the need to reciprocate.
(41:59):
When everybody serving three bird roasts, I have become like
everyone else. So I go one better and show off
with a four bird roast. Four bird roasts become the
new norm, and so I have to go one better.
And you know, I was thinking about this and thinking
that they are actually different and more familiar ways This
can be acted out and socially understood. So we are
(42:20):
not all like Roman consuls or tutor British aristocrats jockeying
for political power. But the desire for status can manifest
to us in ways that seem more benign in our
cultural environment. So here's an example I'm thinking of. You
want to host a family Thanksgiving maybe, and you want
to make sure that the spread is really nice, so
(42:42):
that the people in your family and your friend group
who are attending will like you and will have a
good time, and will enjoy coming to your house at
the holidays and will want to spend time with you.
That is perfectly reasonable thing to want, and it feels
a lot less crass and cutthroat than the historical examples
you know of these, like Roman politicians. But I think
(43:04):
it's fair to say that this is still a way
of using food to boost our social status.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
I think I think that's a good point. I mean,
it's like we are social animals, like we cannot help
but engage in those currents, whether it is about the
grander game of you know, thrones in politics, or if
it is about a much simpler and maybe more wholesome
game of just appealing to friends in love.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
With right wanting to be liked and accepted by your
social circle, by your friends and family. Now to cite
a I don't want to judge too much, but a
potentially fine or potentially less wholesome feeling example from today.
Another variation is not actually physically hosting guests in person,
but like posting your impressive food creations on social media.
(43:52):
In that format, you don't actually have to go to
the trouble of hosting people, but you can still presumably
impress others and gain social status by digitally showing off
your turducan or whatever other impressive food creation on the gram.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Well, you know, it is one of those things that
I guess is kind of like doubly impressive, because not
only does it mean you can cook said dish, but
you also have the talent and skill to properly photograph
or film it. Those two skills don't always go hand
in hand.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Oh they don't. Yeah, yeah, I know. Food photography is
a real It's a thing people don't appreciate enough because
they consume like foo food photography all the time and
like don't realize how disgusting even a lot of really
good food looks. If you know the light conditions aren't
right and so forth. Yeah, But anyway, coming back to
the argument from this book, According to this author Silvertown,
(44:44):
this is why in a food surplus environment, where our
investments in food become more about promoting social status than
about simply satisfying the body's energy needs, there can be
a tendency to always try to go one better, to
keep one upping the social expectations, because the need for
status can have this this zero point adjusted to whatever
(45:08):
your cultural baseline is, which might feel to you like
it involves cramming seven chickens inside nine pigs for Thanksgiving
or whatever. But like you were saying, rob, it cuts
to a core biological reality about humans, which is that
we are not sharks. You know, we are a deeply
social species, and social reputation is nearly as important to
(45:30):
us as food. It's like barely under food in terms
of needs. It's core to our well being. And so
the desire to have a good reputation, to be liked
by friends and family, and to have you know, to
have positive social status, that that is something that it
cuts really deep to the human experience. It's a strong
(45:52):
need we have, and if you get in a cultural
situation where you feel like in order to meet those needs,
to meet that pressure, sure for for reputation and to
be liked and thought of as a good host, and
all that that you need to do increasingly impressive and
possibly even strange creations of food.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
That's you know, it can seem perfectly logical. It's just like,
this is what I've got to do.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, I mean it's I mean, this is the reason
why we have, you know, religious and mythological tales in
which it is it is stressed that you were you
were always good as a host because the people you
are entertaining they may seem like nobody, but they could
be gods in disguise, you know. Like that's how that's
how essential hosting is, uh to the human experience.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Now I want to sort of close things out in
maybe a less cerebral area. I want to talk very
briefly about tofurky because tofurky is also, I mean, I think, objectively,
a funny word. It makes me laugh anytime I see
a package of tofurkey at the store, and that alone
(46:58):
makes me want to buy it.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Can I do a ranking of words? Yeah, I'm gonna
say the least funny word is chicken. Turkey is a
funnier word than chicken. Tofurkey is a funnier word than turkey,
and turduck in is a funnier word than tofurkey.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yes, I think that ranking is solid, but if you're
not familiar with tofurke, it is a holiday meat substitute,
really a feast meat substitute in a limited way. It's
a blend of wheat, protein and tofu. According to the
website of the official Tofurky product, like the company Anyway,
(47:35):
began in nineteen eighty when a teacher and naturalist by
the name of Seth Tibbott made some from scratch Tempe
to share it with friends in Portland, and then like
the company takes off and he eventually gives the world
tofurkey in nineteen ninety five as a vegan holiday roast,
which I mean, you know, the mid nineties, Like that's
as you for a lot of people, like that's early
(47:56):
in vegan cooking. You know, that's a time period where
I feel like it's more likely to be the punchline
on a late night joke. But I guess that's also
the beauty of the word tofurky. It is just innately
funny and is therefore going to wind up the subject
of late night jokes. But essentially what we're talking about
here is, yeah, a vegan meat substitute loaf filled with stuffing.
(48:20):
So you know, it does connect to these various traditions
of big roasts and stuffed meats, but with this meat
free twist, I still prefer feet of meat, but still
I admire the toferki and it makes me think, like,
what additional twists on these traditions we might see in
the near future, even either with our already robust imitation
(48:41):
meat capabilities, which really have come a long way since
the mid nineties. Some phenomenal meat substitutes out there. I'm
a big fan of several of them. But then also
we have the ever potential future of vat grown meat.
I always hear conflicting things about how far that, how
far off that is in terms of feasibility, but maybe
(49:04):
not so far off in terms of just pure you
know meat spectacle. You know, like you could imagine that
grown whatever being like the extravagant centerpiece, because it's like,
you know, it's not at the point yet, you know,
where it can be rolled out to everyone.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
My God though, I mean the creator. Like, if you're
impressed by cramming together some crab legs and a turkey
to look like a face hug, or imagine what could
be done if you can actually like grow the meat
to a specified mold, you can make all kinds of things,
and that could also be an interesting uh yeah, like
a an extravagant kind of You know, it's probably not
(49:41):
cheap to do that, but if you really want to
impress your guests, it's like here, you're you're going to
eat a I don't know, a delicious unicorn head.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
I mean, what do meats and up tasting like when
they are still on some level biologically meat, but they're
divorced from the concept of living animals and are subject
to human tinkering and engineering, Like you know, what strange
new tastes and forms are possible? I mean, I mean,
I guess we're pointing out that to certainly, to a
large extent, humans have already manipulated the taste and form
(50:14):
of various meats in their domesticated meat animals, but you know,
this would just take it to the next level potentially,
mm hmm. It depends, I guess to what extent you
feel like you have to stay in line with the
traditions and to what extent you can stray away from them.
But who knows, there could come a time when on
(50:35):
the same table you could serve both cock and trice
and cock a trice right there next to each other
on silver bladders.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Yeah. So, hey, folks out there, if you're listening and
you work in the in the lab grown meatfield, right
in and let us know, like how feasible is this?
Could you grow a cockatrice to eat?
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah, and the rest of you out there are pro chefs,
amateur chefs, et cetera. Right in with your your thoughts
and experiences with any of the recipes we've discussed in
this episode, we'd love to hear from you. Send your
food pictures as well.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
We'll have a look up, especially if they look disgusting
because of the lighting.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
We will not judge you on that count. A Right,
We're gonna go ahead and close out this episode, but
we'll just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to send
us your interesting holiday creations, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hi, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, what's the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.