November 22, 2016
How to Serve a Flaming Bird
first, the peacock should be killed by stabbing it in the head with a sharp knife or by slitting its throat, as you would with a baby goat. Then slice the body from the neck all the way to the tail, cutting only the skin and delicately skinning it so that you do not ruin the feathers or the skin. When you have finished skinning the body, turn the skin inside out, from the neck down. Make sure not to detach the head from the skin of the neck; and similarly, make sure that the legs remain attached to the skin of the thighs. Then dress it well for roasting, and stuff it with good things and good spices, and take some whole cloves and use them to stud the breast, and cook the bird slowly on a spit; and place a wet cloth around the neck so that the heat does not overly dry it; and wet the cloth repeatedly. When it is done cooking, remove form the spit and dress it up in its skin. - - Ask the Past: , c. 1465
Posted by gerardvanderleun at November 22, 2016 8:07 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Or, you could just sit it on the table in front of the guests, jam a dbl barrel 8ga coach gun up it's anus and pull both triggers at the same time, raining guest silhouets against the back wall as they recoil in horror, then dump hog fat all over the table and light it and Utoob the whole mess to the twitter cloud.
Boring dinner parties are so passe'.
Posted by: ghostsniper at November 23, 2016 4:36 AM
Like my dad would have said: That sure sounds like a lot of trouble.
Posted by: Jack at November 23, 2016 8:35 AM
You can't buy good entertainment, you gotta make it.
Or stay on the couch.....
Posted by: ghostsniper at November 23, 2016 2:19 PM
See, most of the time your medieval diner did not have a varied diet. He was stuck with seasonal vegetables and meat, and even spices could only do so much.
Therefore, when guests came over, the medieval cook wanted to make familiar dishes appear like something else. So you colored bread gold and red. You deviled eggs and put them into imitation shells. You made decorative sculptural pie crust. You made one meat look like another kind of meat, or a vegetable. And in this case, you figured out a way to cook peacock (not easy in the first place), while preserving the feathers in the cooked skin in all their brightness.
Not easy. Maybe better not done. But this sort of cooking was all about impressing your lordly employer's noble neighbors with his wealth and power, as well as keeping your lord from being bored to death with eating the same old thing again and again.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at November 24, 2016 1:33 PM