Like Matryoshka, Only Edible

[beamjockey]

So again the holidays approach, and again one hears mention of the festive "turducken," a turkey, stuffed with a deboned duck, stuffed with a deboned chicken.

Has anybody yet served up an ostremuturduckengame-hen?

Comments

[gomeza.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of one - perhaps you should take it as a challenge and be the first!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

There are many variations on the old French idea of a farce, wherein progressively smaller critters are stuffed into a big critter. The most elaborate one I have is contained in Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, a book of recipes from the Royal Navy. It involves a camel stuffed with a pig stuffed with a lamb stuffed with yellow rice and boiled chickens. I've heard tell of even crazier things, some of them going all the way down to doormice.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I actually have that book, authored by Patrick O'Brian fans rabid enough to ransack 18th century cookbooks, apply some guesswork, and come up with recipes for all the stuff that Capt. Aubrey and Dr. Maturin eat.

(It's a work of mighty enthusiasm and misplaced scholarship, equivalent to the Klingonese Macbeth, or the scribblings of the Baker Street Irregulars.)

But, obviously, I haven't read it all the way through, or I'd have recalled the camel thing.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I recall the camel thing from the 60's or 70's era "Guiness Book Of World Records," which I, like many of my peers, spent an inordinately amount of time memorizing.

K. [World's Oldest Mother: 57. I wonder if that one is still standing?]

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

I think some woman here in the USA had kids at 59. I'm not sure that's a record of merit though.

[chirosinger.livejournal.com]

So when's dinner?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Here's the definitive thread on the topic from eGullet: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=17178.

I've never cooked one, although I've thought about it. It's more for effect than anything else.

B

[cannibal.livejournal.com]

The Royal Roast in the peachcroft.co.uk link off that thread sounds a lot more interesting, free range goose, chicken and wild pheasant. Probably still not as good as all three separately, it sounds like.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've eaten a slice of turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken stuffed with another smaller bird, possibly a quail, with stuffing inside that.

It wasn't actually particularly nice.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Friends were just discussing this, and extrapolating. One the one hand, you have the "...turtleturtleturtleturtleturducken". On the other, you could eat scarlet-fever streptococci.

Dry...

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

If you could put the turkey inside a goose... or a pheasant inside a duck...

Putting the driest, blandest bird on the outside seems to make a mockery of the whole project.

I've not eaten one, but I'm familiar with the concept.

Re: Dry...

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

One traditional solution to the turkey-dry thing is to lather on bacon (plus, the bacon is great snackfood when it finally emerges from the oven), which I suppose in context is sort-of like the preliminary version of stuffing the entire damn thing inside a pig.

Which might just be overkill.