How About A Thanksgiving Swan?
Slate Magazine has a really interesting article on why turkeys are now the go-to bird for the holidays. The answer, in short, is that it comes down to size and economics. Turkeys are cheap, big birds that could feed lots of people. Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol helped cement its place in the pantheon of holiday cuisine.
An interesting fact pertains to what the British used to serve for special occasions:
The British once served geese, swans, and even peacocks on special occasions, but they came to prefer turkey after it was first introduced to England in about 1540. Swans, because of their diet, would taste fishy unless they were fed wheat for weeks before slaughter.
Fishy swan. Yum.
Something to chew on (Hah!) and kibitz about at the dinner table tomorrow.
(There’s no political overtone with my picture selection, grabbed from FoxNews. I just was doing a search on turkeys and lots of photos of President Bush came up with turkeys, no doubt for pardoning. This one makes me very uneasy, almost uncomfortable. I encourage you to make your own caption.)
The best part about the British and their thing for eating a wide variety of birds is that they would often re-feather them after cooking. I can’t imagine all the work it would take to stick the feathers back into a peacock when it was just going to get eaten anyway.
And you’re right, that picture is disturbing.
K.
What? Are you kidding? Re-feathering the fowl? That’s crazy!