November 21, 2024 • 51 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe prepare us for the holiday feasts ahead with a discussion of 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!
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. Hey, what are we
talking about today, Rob?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh, we're getting into feasting season here, Joe. So we're
gonna 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, some
(00:45):
outrageous feast dishes, and then also some sort of related
tangential subject matter that's sort of swirling around those dishes.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I'm salivating the thought of the beauties and the grotesqueries
to follow.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes, 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 the
(01:19):
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 (01:28):
Okay, but I know you got crankin' on this topic
because you were interested in one particular example from history, right.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
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
(01:55):
center what's going on in your setting. But yeah, we're
going to turn to fifteenth century year. 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
(02:15):
out of the Renaissance, yes, but there are some There
are some real clunkers that come out of it as well,
And this, I don't know, this could be one of them, can't.
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 with another word that
(02:37):
you may find not in a menu from Tutor England,
but more likely in a bestiary.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
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 cock a trice subject will have some overlap with
our past discussions of the mythical monster known as the basilisk.
(03:05):
These 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
(03:27):
little t 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
(03:47):
that hatches from a cock's egg, sometimes after like a
cock egg is incubated by a reptile or a toad. Generally,
a cockatrice is news. It is a venomous monster or
a monster that kills everything around it. Though there is
an interesting sort of literary history of this word, because
(04:09):
if you go 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
(04:32):
in 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, you know, comparing wickedness and sin and
(04:56):
lack of moral virtue to venomous in and predatory animals,
dangerous beasts.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So no hatching cockatrice eggs. That's what I'm taking for
the scripture.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
That's not a good thing to do. That 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. Cockatrice is among you,
which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you,
saith the Lord.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Oh wow, let's stay to the point.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
They shall bite you. Now. The word cockatrice does not
appear in later translations of the Bible that are 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
(05:53):
that 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
(06:14):
some 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,
(06:37):
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
(06:58):
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 2 (07:14):
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
(07:36):
are being served not an animal of the mundane world,
but rather some fantastic hybrid that belongs, perhaps in a
bestiary alongside the cock a trice.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
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
(08:10):
on the side, and then a tail made out of
like a stuffed sausage.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, he's send me that photos. It's quite horrifying.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, it makes you want to eat them.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
You know, and you know, even you know, vegans and
vegetarians 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
(08:42):
it is meat loaf. Were in our case we was like,
you know, imitation meat that takes the form of one
or two disembodied bloody feet.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Beautiful. That's so nice.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
So you know, I can't be too judging about all
this because I totally do it as well. Now, as
for the cock and 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
(09:15):
of 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,
(09:37):
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 cock a griss in this or perhaps
catt agriss. And this is combining the words for cock
(09:59):
and gris a suckling pig. That being said, it does,
I mean, I couldn't find much where people are really
talking about 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
(10:23):
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
(10:43):
tables and Tutor England. And you can look around. You
can find various videos online of modern chefs and 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 people
(11:07):
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
in this case is not just here for your consumption.
One would assume it is also supposed to taste good.
(11:30):
But on top of that, it is like the sheer
performance of the presentation, which you know that's going to
be president a lot of meals, but like it becomes
part of the forefront in a case like this.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
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 2 (11:51):
Stunt food is good. Yeah, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Food that's not just to be eaten, it's also to
be admired as an act.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yes. So Reverenson's book contains numerous other at least from
my vantage point, strange tudor dishes. We can all disagree
on this, and you know, and ultimately, I'm sure there
(12:21):
are examples of similar dishes in various culinary traditions and
cultures where it's like totally not weird for you to
eat it.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
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 2 (12:35):
Yeah, so when I say it sounds weird to me,
it's weird because I'm imagining the tutors 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 (12:55):
Oh delicious.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
This one really gave my wife pause. Cow's utters in
mustard sauce. I'm not sure like 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 (13:10):
This cow's utters in sweet and sour sauce I think
would work better.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And then also multiple peacock recipes, yes, peacocks.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Now, wait, now that I'm thinking about it, why don't
any like of these fast food chains have a dipping
sauce for your nuggets that is blood and entrail sauce.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I mean they could with the right market, you could
call it that and people would go nuts for it.
But these peacock recimees, Oh my goodness, I think I
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
(13:55):
I've probably seen one. You know, they walk around the
males of the spece. These 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 the spit roasted bird to be covered with
(14:18):
gold leaf and recovered in the peacock's skin and feathers
after it's been for the So 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 of the Secrets of Art in Nature
(14:40):
from sixteen sixty one.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
That sounds like a book by like John d Or Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, it sounds like it would be alchemical in nature
and not about eating.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
A peacock, not about how to have fun with peacock corpses.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense. If you
can eat the peacock, you want to admire the feathers.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yes. So.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
The p foul, as 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 true p fowl.
The Indian p foul is the key species for our
concerns here, notable for the splendid mating displays made by
(15:23):
the male peacocks that surely 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 have occurred
earlier than that. It's an interesting bird in its own right,
and we could probably devote an entire episode to it,
(15:46):
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 from Indian traditions,
and for this I turned once more to Krishna's Sacred
(16:07):
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 is held
as the animal form of the sky god Indra. Also,
(16:28):
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 Ravana. The peacock
is an enemy of snakes and represents victory over evil tendencies.
And this is apparently based on real life, because peacocks
in their natural habitat do eat small snakes. And of
(16:50):
course this reminds me a little bit of talking of
what we've talked about concerning the Kaka trice and the
basilisk oh.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I don't think I even mentioned this at the time,
but some sources say that the kaokatrice 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 2 (17:17):
The peacock is also held to be the vehicle of
the war god Kartaikia. 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
(17:38):
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
(17:58):
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 as an import of King Solomon. Now,
during the medieval period in Europe, they were favorite inclusions
(18:20):
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 and
(18:42):
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. The animal
can be I guess, both symbolic and delicious.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
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. Maybe.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
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,
(19:24):
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 where any degree
of accuracy, like who this was that wrote this, But
on the subject of cooking, this is in translation. Of course,
(19:47):
it is stated entrees of peacock occupied the first drink,
provided they be dressed in such manner that the hard
and tough parts be tender. The second place in the
estimation of gourmet have dishes made of rabbit, third spiny lobster,
fourth comes chicken, and fifth young pig.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
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 that's just
down the list. That's after your rabbit and your spiny lobster.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Wait, beef doesn't even make the list. No love for fish?
Where's my goat?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
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 tutor dish, As listed by
Breverton in his book as redressed peacocks which seem alive
and how to make them breathe fire through their mouth.
(20:54):
This is one of the listings from Tutor England that
he goes over it. So basically this is a This
is very similar to the 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
(21:15):
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, colorless substance 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 (21:36):
Were peacocks thought to breathe fire in life? Or I
wonder what this is connecting to.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
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 (21:54):
Okayya blow out the peacock honey. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
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
(22:20):
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 (22:32):
This is getting more and more unicorn by the moment.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It is. 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 (22:53):
To be clear, this is not true. Peacock's rot when they.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Die, right, right. But this idea seems to go back
a ways. I've seen it attributed to Aristotle, but I
don't believe he ever directly addressed it, though I think
there are 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.
(23:17):
Writers such as Plenty and Plutarch would have they also
discussed the bird's links to traditions of immortality. But where
we really 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
(23:40):
you here from the Marcus Dodds translation, for who bought God,
the 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. A bird of this kind was cooked
(24:02):
and served up to me, and taking a suitable slice
of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to be kept.
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
(24:24):
was still in the same state, and a year after
the same still, except that it was a little more
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 (24:41):
I don't think I understood that last sentence.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Well, he's tying it all into the power of God,
the creator, the chaff and the ripening of green fruit
that's not directly involved with the peacock's flesh, but.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
It's some context of theological observation. Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
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 didn't
rot and a year later it's still good. What can
(25:20):
I say? Glory to the creator?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Imagine if you saw that video I don't know when
this was of like the McDonald's burger that wouldn't rot.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Remember that, 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 not mere pride as you might expect from watching
(25:48):
a peacock stroll about, but of Christian eschatology, informed as
well by medieval ideas concerning their molting and 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
(26:11):
in early catacombs and so forth.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
And thus we shall dine upon it.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
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 of 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
(26:38):
from anyone out there who has who can testify to
the corruptibility of its flesh. But also just how does
it taste if prepared properly. What are your tips for
cooking peacock?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
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
peacock equivalent of cocoa vaan.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah, yeah, 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 Ruckers in
the nineteen nineties and get a peacock burger like you
could get like an Ostrich burger apparently, but at any rate.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
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
(27:42):
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 urduccan, a three bird or made of
a duck, a chicken, and a turkey, and I've seen
(28:04):
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
(28:27):
in whole with the bones at all. The bird carcasses
are fully de boned 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 2 (28:41):
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 (28:54):
Deboning a whole poultry carcass is I have actually done
it before. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Sure, if
you're an experienced butcher, it's you know, it's pretty easy.
But to my amateur hands it.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Was a task, I bet.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Though I have never made a turducan. This was just
a chicken.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
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 (29:18):
So the tur 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 fine in gastration of funny concept. Also,
I suspect because the word turducan contains the word turd.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
That's true, It's just a funny sounding word.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yes. Famously, the American football commentator John Madden talked about
the idea of a turducan 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 as I was reading about it. But
I looked up some of these videos and it is
(30:04):
quite fun. He's Madden is talking about the tru duck
in with an adorable combination of amusement and amazement. It's
just like, get allo 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 from the Eagles versus the forty nine Ers
(30:26):
game 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
(30:51):
Hot Chick 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 2 (31:07):
Yeah, I watched this video and I 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 (31:17):
Literally he made so many video games.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, yeah, prolific of time for that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
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, OK. I
think by some principle of mathematics that works out to
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I think, so right right, sure, it's got it.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
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 true 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 how a turducan is
(32:01):
structured by he brings the camera over to this prepared
roasted turducan and then just rips it apart with his
hands to show all the layers.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Oh my goodness, somebody spent all day on that.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah. So who actually invented the turducan and when is
a matter of some dispute. The American Cajun and Creole
chef Paul Prudam at one point claimed he invented the
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
(32:34):
recipe 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
(32:57):
turducan is how close does a rect 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
(33:18):
this order.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, Plus it also comes down to the question are
you talking about doubles are you talking about triples?
Speaker 3 (33:23):
That's right, So I mentioned the idea of stunt food earlier.
You know, the cockin 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 lie in
(33:47):
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, and the preparation. It's the idea that, like,
(34:10):
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 that appeal
in more sympathetic and less sympathetic ways. So in our
cultural context, a more sympathetic view would be that it's
like an expression of creativity by a cook, a desire
(34:33):
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 you know
you're hiring the cook or buying this thing. It's about
(34:55):
showing off your power and wealth. So I want to
keep that in mind while we turn into 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 name Jonathan Silvertown.
(35:17):
So the book is called Dinner with Darwin, Food, Drink
and Evolution, published by the University of Chicago Press in
twenty seventeen. 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. And in sixty three BCE there was a
(35:40):
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. The host of this banquet for
was one of the richest citizens of Rome, a consule
(36:04):
named Servilius Rullus. And allegedly, you know, 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 of the feast would be the porcus troyanis,
or what French authors would later call the bore a
(36:26):
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 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
(36:50):
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 2 (37:00):
Whoa, it's already getting outrageous, and we haven't gotten inside
the pig.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I 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 2 (37:28):
Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
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 that bird in the middle was
(37:50):
not cooked properly. Yeah, or if it was, everything else
was dry as heck. But anyway, so this is how
you get the name Trojan pitch. 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
(38:11):
that it will launch a sneak attack on your body
from the inside.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Well yeah, yeah, it sounds like it just might.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
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 boar, to
spill out of the hog like intestines. Delicious.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Okay, maybe it's more amusing if you're like closer to
your butchery culture.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
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
(39:09):
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 about
what food is for changes. It becomes less about meeting
(39:29):
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 like most cultures
throughout history, there has been a social status benefit to
being a good host. That's like a I don't know
(39:51):
if 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
(40:13):
giving 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
(40:38):
hunger 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
(40:59):
safe will trend 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. A silvertown rights quote. My three bird roast
raises my status among my dinner guests, who then feel
(41:22):
the need to reciprocate. When everybody is 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.
(41:44):
So we are 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,
(42:04):
and you want to make sure that the spread is
really nice, so 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 we'll want to spend
time with you. That that is perfectly reasonable thing to want,
And it feels a lot less crass and cutthroat than
(42:24):
the historical examples you know of these, like Roman politicians.
But I think it's fair to say that this is
still a way of using food to boost our social status.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
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 with.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
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. In that format,
(43:17):
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 2 (43:31):
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 (43:46):
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 food 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,
(44:09):
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 your
(44:33):
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 us as food.
(44:55):
It's like barely under food in terms of needs. It's
core to our wealth being. And so the desire to
have a good reputation, to be liked by friends and family,
to do 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 need we have.
(45:18):
And if you get in a cultural situation where you
feel like in order to meet those needs, to meet
that pressure 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. That's you know, it can seem perfectly logical.
(45:38):
It's just like this is what I've got to do.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
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 to the human experience. Yeah, now
(46:02):
I want to sort of close things out in maybe
a less cerebral area. I want to talk very briefly
about tofurky, because tofurkey 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
(46:23):
makes me want to buy it.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Can I do a ranking of words? Yeah, they said,
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 2 (46:38):
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,
(47:00):
began in nineteen eighty when a teacher and naturalists 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
(47:21):
in vegan cooking. You know, that's a time period where
I feel like it's more likely to be 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
(47:43):
filled with stuffing. 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
(48:05):
imitation 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 that grown meat.
I always hear conflicting things about how far that, how
far off that is in terms of feasibility, but maybe
(48:28):
not so far off in terms of just pure 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 (48:45):
My god, though, I mean the create 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 could make all kinds of things,
and that could also be an interesting uh yeah, like ah,
an extravagant kind of you know, it's probably not cheap
(49:05):
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 2 (49:15):
I mean, what do meats end up tasting like when
they are still on some level biologically meat, but they're
divorced from the concept of living animals and they 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
(49:39):
of various meats and their they're 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
(49:59):
time when on the same table you could serve both
cock and trice and cock a trice right there next
to each other on on silver platters.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
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 2 (50:19):
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 (50:32):
We'll have a look up, especially if they look disgusting
because of the lighting.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
We will not judge you on that count. All right,
We're gonna 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 (50:55):
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 1 (51:20):
Stuff to Blow Your mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. Hey, what are we
talking about today, Rob?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh, we're getting into feasting season here, Joe. So we're
gonna 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, some
(00:45):
outrageous feast dishes, and then also some sort of related
tangential subject matter that's sort of swirling around those dishes.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I'm salivating the thought of the beauties and the grotesqueries
to follow.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes, 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 the
(01:19):
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 (01:28):
Okay, but I know you got crankin' on this topic
because you were interested in one particular example from history, right.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
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
(01:55):
center what's going on in your setting. But yeah, we're
going to turn to fifteenth century year. 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
(02:15):
out of the Renaissance, yes, but there are some There
are some real clunkers that come out of it as well,
And this, I don't know, this could be one of them, can't.
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 with another word that
(02:37):
you may find not in a menu from Tutor England,
but more likely in a bestiary.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
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 cock a trice subject will have some overlap with
our past discussions of the mythical monster known as the basilisk.
(03:05):
These 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
(03:27):
little t 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
(03:47):
that hatches from a cock's egg, sometimes after like a
cock egg is incubated by a reptile or a toad. Generally,
a cockatrice is news. It is a venomous monster or
a monster that kills everything around it. Though there is
an interesting sort of literary history of this word, because
(04:09):
if you go 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
(04:32):
in 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, you know, comparing wickedness and sin and
(04:56):
lack of moral virtue to venomous in and predatory animals,
dangerous beasts.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So no hatching cockatrice eggs. That's what I'm taking for
the scripture.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
That's not a good thing to do. That 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. Cockatrice is among you,
which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you,
saith the Lord.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Oh wow, let's stay to the point.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
They shall bite you. Now. The word cockatrice does not
appear in later translations of the Bible that are 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
(05:53):
that 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
(06:14):
some 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,
(06:37):
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
(06:58):
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 2 (07:14):
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
(07:36):
are being served not an animal of the mundane world,
but rather some fantastic hybrid that belongs, perhaps in a
bestiary alongside the cock a trice.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
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
(08:10):
on the side, and then a tail made out of
like a stuffed sausage.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, he's send me that photos. It's quite horrifying.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, it makes you want to eat them.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
You know, and you know, even you know, vegans and
vegetarians 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
(08:42):
it is meat loaf. Were in our case we was like,
you know, imitation meat that takes the form of one
or two disembodied bloody feet.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Beautiful. That's so nice.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
So you know, I can't be too judging about all
this because I totally do it as well. Now, as
for the cock and 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
(09:15):
of 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,
(09:37):
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 cock a griss in this or perhaps
catt agriss. And this is combining the words for cock
(09:59):
and gris a suckling pig. That being said, it does,
I mean, I couldn't find much where people are really
talking about 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
(10:23):
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
(10:43):
tables and Tutor England. And you can look around. You
can find various videos online of modern chefs and 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 people
(11:07):
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
in this case is not just here for your consumption.
One would assume it is also supposed to taste good.
(11:30):
But on top of that, it is like the sheer
performance of the presentation, which you know that's going to
be president a lot of meals, but like it becomes
part of the forefront in a case like this.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
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 2 (11:51):
Stunt food is good. Yeah, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Food that's not just to be eaten, it's also to
be admired as an act.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yes. So Reverenson's book contains numerous other at least from
my vantage point, strange tudor dishes. We can all disagree
on this, and you know, and ultimately, I'm sure there
(12:21):
are examples of similar dishes in various culinary traditions and
cultures where it's like totally not weird for you to
eat it.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
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 2 (12:35):
Yeah, so when I say it sounds weird to me,
it's weird because I'm imagining the tutors 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 (12:55):
Oh delicious.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
This one really gave my wife pause. Cow's utters in
mustard sauce. I'm not sure like 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 (13:10):
This cow's utters in sweet and sour sauce I think
would work better.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And then also multiple peacock recipes, yes, peacocks.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Now, wait, now that I'm thinking about it, why don't
any like of these fast food chains have a dipping
sauce for your nuggets that is blood and entrail sauce.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I mean they could with the right market, you could
call it that and people would go nuts for it.
But these peacock recimees, Oh my goodness, I think I
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
(13:55):
I've probably seen one. You know, they walk around the
males of the spece. These 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 the spit roasted bird to be covered with
(14:18):
gold leaf and recovered in the peacock's skin and feathers
after it's been for the So 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 of the Secrets of Art in Nature
(14:40):
from sixteen sixty one.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
That sounds like a book by like John d Or Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, it sounds like it would be alchemical in nature
and not about eating.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
A peacock, not about how to have fun with peacock corpses.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense. If you
can eat the peacock, you want to admire the feathers.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yes. So.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
The p foul, as 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 true p fowl.
The Indian p foul is the key species for our
concerns here, notable for the splendid mating displays made by
(15:23):
the male peacocks that surely 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 have occurred
earlier than that. It's an interesting bird in its own right,
and we could probably devote an entire episode to it,
(15:46):
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 from Indian traditions,
and for this I turned once more to Krishna's Sacred
(16:07):
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 is held
as the animal form of the sky god Indra. Also,
(16:28):
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 Ravana. The peacock
is an enemy of snakes and represents victory over evil tendencies.
And this is apparently based on real life, because peacocks
in their natural habitat do eat small snakes. And of
(16:50):
course this reminds me a little bit of talking of
what we've talked about concerning the Kaka trice and the
basilisk oh.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I don't think I even mentioned this at the time,
but some sources say that the kaokatrice 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 2 (17:17):
The peacock is also held to be the vehicle of
the war god Kartaikia. 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
(17:38):
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
(17:58):
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 as an import of King Solomon. Now,
during the medieval period in Europe, they were favorite inclusions
(18:20):
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 and
(18:42):
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. The animal
can be I guess, both symbolic and delicious.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
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. Maybe.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
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,
(19:24):
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 where any degree
of accuracy, like who this was that wrote this, But
on the subject of cooking, this is in translation. Of course,
(19:47):
it is stated entrees of peacock occupied the first drink,
provided they be dressed in such manner that the hard
and tough parts be tender. The second place in the
estimation of gourmet have dishes made of rabbit, third spiny lobster,
fourth comes chicken, and fifth young pig.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
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 that's just
down the list. That's after your rabbit and your spiny lobster.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Wait, beef doesn't even make the list. No love for fish?
Where's my goat?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
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 tutor dish, As listed by
Breverton in his book as redressed peacocks which seem alive
and how to make them breathe fire through their mouth.
(20:54):
This is one of the listings from Tutor England that
he goes over it. So basically this is a This
is very similar to the 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
(21:15):
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, colorless substance 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 (21:36):
Were peacocks thought to breathe fire in life? Or I
wonder what this is connecting to.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
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 (21:54):
Okayya blow out the peacock honey. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
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
(22:20):
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 (22:32):
This is getting more and more unicorn by the moment.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It is. 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 (22:53):
To be clear, this is not true. Peacock's rot when they.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Die, right, right. But this idea seems to go back
a ways. I've seen it attributed to Aristotle, but I
don't believe he ever directly addressed it, though I think
there are 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.
(23:17):
Writers such as Plenty and Plutarch would have they also
discussed the bird's links to traditions of immortality. But where
we really 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
(23:40):
you here from the Marcus Dodds translation, for who bought God,
the 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. A bird of this kind was cooked
(24:02):
and served up to me, and taking a suitable slice
of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to be kept.
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
(24:24):
was still in the same state, and a year after
the same still, except that it was a little more
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 (24:41):
I don't think I understood that last sentence.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Well, he's tying it all into the power of God,
the creator, the chaff and the ripening of green fruit
that's not directly involved with the peacock's flesh, but.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
It's some context of theological observation. Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
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 didn't
rot and a year later it's still good. What can
(25:20):
I say? Glory to the creator?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Imagine if you saw that video I don't know when
this was of like the McDonald's burger that wouldn't rot.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Remember that, 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 not mere pride as you might expect from watching
(25:48):
a peacock stroll about, but of Christian eschatology, informed as
well by medieval ideas concerning their molting and 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
(26:11):
in early catacombs and so forth.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
And thus we shall dine upon it.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
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 of 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
(26:38):
from anyone out there who has who can testify to
the corruptibility of its flesh. But also just how does
it taste if prepared properly. What are your tips for
cooking peacock?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
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
peacock equivalent of cocoa vaan.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah, yeah, 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 Ruckers in
the nineteen nineties and get a peacock burger like you
could get like an Ostrich burger apparently, but at any rate.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
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
(27:42):
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 urduccan, a three bird or made of
a duck, a chicken, and a turkey, and I've seen
(28:04):
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
(28:27):
in whole with the bones at all. The bird carcasses
are fully de boned 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 2 (28:41):
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 (28:54):
Deboning a whole poultry carcass is I have actually done
it before. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Sure, if
you're an experienced butcher, it's you know, it's pretty easy.
But to my amateur hands it.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Was a task, I bet.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Though I have never made a turducan. This was just
a chicken.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
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 (29:18):
So the tur 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 fine in gastration of funny concept. Also,
I suspect because the word turducan contains the word turd.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
That's true, It's just a funny sounding word.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yes. Famously, the American football commentator John Madden talked about
the idea of a turducan 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 as I was reading about it. But
I looked up some of these videos and it is
(30:04):
quite fun. He's Madden is talking about the tru duck
in with an adorable combination of amusement and amazement. It's
just like, get allo 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 from the Eagles versus the forty nine Ers
(30:26):
game 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
(30:51):
Hot Chick 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 2 (31:07):
Yeah, I watched this video and I 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 (31:17):
Literally he made so many video games.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, yeah, prolific of time for that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
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, OK. I
think by some principle of mathematics that works out to
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I think, so right right, sure, it's got it.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
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 true 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 how a turducan is
(32:01):
structured by he brings the camera over to this prepared
roasted turducan and then just rips it apart with his
hands to show all the layers.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Oh my goodness, somebody spent all day on that.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah. So who actually invented the turducan and when is
a matter of some dispute. The American Cajun and Creole
chef Paul Prudam at one point claimed he invented the
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
(32:34):
recipe 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
(32:57):
turducan is how close does a rect 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
(33:18):
this order.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, Plus it also comes down to the question are
you talking about doubles are you talking about triples?
Speaker 3 (33:23):
That's right, So I mentioned the idea of stunt food earlier.
You know, the cockin 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 lie in
(33:47):
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, and the preparation. It's the idea that, like,
(34:10):
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 that appeal
in more sympathetic and less sympathetic ways. So in our
cultural context, a more sympathetic view would be that it's
like an expression of creativity by a cook, a desire
(34:33):
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 you know
you're hiring the cook or buying this thing. It's about
(34:55):
showing off your power and wealth. So I want to
keep that in mind while we turn into 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 name Jonathan Silvertown.
(35:17):
So the book is called Dinner with Darwin, Food, Drink
and Evolution, published by the University of Chicago Press in
twenty seventeen. 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. And in sixty three BCE there was a
(35:40):
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. The host of this banquet for
was one of the richest citizens of Rome, a consule
(36:04):
named Servilius Rullus. And allegedly, you know, 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 of the feast would be the porcus troyanis,
or what French authors would later call the bore a
(36:26):
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 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
(36:50):
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 2 (37:00):
Whoa, it's already getting outrageous, and we haven't gotten inside
the pig.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I 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 2 (37:28):
Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
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 that bird in the middle was
(37:50):
not cooked properly. Yeah, or if it was, everything else
was dry as heck. But anyway, so this is how
you get the name Trojan pitch. 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
(38:11):
that it will launch a sneak attack on your body
from the inside.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Well yeah, yeah, it sounds like it just might.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
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 boar, to
spill out of the hog like intestines. Delicious.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Okay, maybe it's more amusing if you're like closer to
your butchery culture.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
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
(39:09):
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 about
what food is for changes. It becomes less about meeting
(39:29):
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 like most cultures
throughout history, there has been a social status benefit to
being a good host. That's like a I don't know
(39:51):
if 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
(40:13):
giving 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
(40:38):
hunger 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
(40:59):
safe will trend 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. A silvertown rights quote. My three bird roast
raises my status among my dinner guests, who then feel
(41:22):
the need to reciprocate. When everybody is 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.
(41:44):
So we are 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,
(42:04):
and you want to make sure that the spread is
really nice, so 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 we'll want to spend
time with you. That that is perfectly reasonable thing to want,
And it feels a lot less crass and cutthroat than
(42:24):
the historical examples you know of these, like Roman politicians.
But I think it's fair to say that this is
still a way of using food to boost our social status.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
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 with.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
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. In that format,
(43:17):
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 2 (43:31):
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 (43:46):
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 food 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,
(44:09):
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 your
(44:33):
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 us as food.
(44:55):
It's like barely under food in terms of needs. It's
core to our wealth being. And so the desire to
have a good reputation, to be liked by friends and family,
to do 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 need we have.
(45:18):
And if you get in a cultural situation where you
feel like in order to meet those needs, to meet
that pressure 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. That's you know, it can seem perfectly logical.
(45:38):
It's just like this is what I've got to do.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
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 to the human experience. Yeah, now
(46:02):
I want to sort of close things out in maybe
a less cerebral area. I want to talk very briefly
about tofurky, because tofurkey 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
(46:23):
makes me want to buy it.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Can I do a ranking of words? Yeah, they said,
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 2 (46:38):
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,
(47:00):
began in nineteen eighty when a teacher and naturalists 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
(47:21):
in vegan cooking. You know, that's a time period where
I feel like it's more likely to be 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
(47:43):
filled with stuffing. 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
(48:05):
imitation 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 that grown meat.
I always hear conflicting things about how far that, how
far off that is in terms of feasibility, but maybe
(48:28):
not so far off in terms of just pure 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 (48:45):
My god, though, I mean the create 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 could make all kinds of things,
and that could also be an interesting uh yeah, like ah,
an extravagant kind of you know, it's probably not cheap
(49:05):
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 2 (49:15):
I mean, what do meats end up tasting like when
they are still on some level biologically meat, but they're
divorced from the concept of living animals and they 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
(49:39):
of various meats and their they're 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
(49:59):
time when on the same table you could serve both
cock and trice and cock a trice right there next
to each other on on silver platters.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
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 2 (50:19):
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 (50:32):
We'll have a look up, especially if they look disgusting
because of the lighting.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
We will not judge you on that count. All right,
We're gonna 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 (50:55):
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 1 (51:20):
Stuff to Blow Your mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
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