Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  —from Kitab Wasf al-At’ima al-Mu’tada,

  The Description of Familiar Foods, 1373,

  translated from the Arabic by Charles Perry

  HANNAH GLASSE ON TURKEY

  To roast a Turky.

  The best Way to roast a Turky is to loosen the Skin on the Breast of the Turky, and fill it with Force-Meat made thus: Take a Quarter of a Pound of Beef Sewet, as many Crumbs of Bread, a little Lemon-peel, an Anchovy, some Nutmeg, Pepper, Parsley, and a little Thyme; chop and beat them all well together, mix them with the Yolk of an Egg, and stuff up the Breast; when you have no Sewet Butter will do: Or you may make your Force-Meat thus: Spread Bread and Butter thin, and grate some Nutmeg over it; when you have enough roll it up, and stuff the Breast of the Turky; then roast it of a fine Brown, but be sure to pin some white Paper on the Breast till it is near enough. You must have good Gravy in the Dish, and Bread-sauce made thus: Take a good Piece of Crumb, put it into a Pint of Water, with a Blade or two of Mace, two or three Cloves, and some whole Pepper; boil it up five or six Times, then with a Spoon take out the Spice, and pour off the Water (you may boil an Onion in it if you please) then beat up the Bread with a good Piece of Butter and a little Salt; or Onion Sauce made thus: Take some Onions, peel them, and cut them into thin Slices, and boil them Half an Hour in Milk and Water; then drain the Water from them, and beat them up with a good Piece of Butter; shake a little Flour in, and stir it all together with a little Cream, if you have it (or Milk will do) put the Sauce into Boats, and garnish with Lemon.

  Another Way to make Sauce: Take Half a Pint of Oysters, strain the Liquor, and put the Oysters with the Liquor into a Sauce-pan, with a Blade or two of Mace; let them just plump, then pour in a Glass of White Wine, let it boil once, and thicken it with a Piece of Butter roll’d in Flour: Serve this up in a Bason by itself, with good Gravy in the Dish, for every Body don’t love Oyster Sauce. This makes a pretty Side Dish for Supper, or a Corner Dish of a Table for Dinner. If you chase it in the Dish, add Half a Pint of Gravy to it, and boil it up together. This Sauce is good either with boiled or roasted Turkies or Fowls; but you may leave the Gravy out, adding as much Butter as will do for Sauce, and garnishing with Lemon.

  To make Mock Oyster-Sauce, either for Turkies or Fowls boil’d.

  Force the Turkies or Fowls as above, and make your Sauce thus: Take a Quarter of a Pint of Water, an Anchovy, a Blade or two of Mace, a Piece of Lemon-peel, and five or six whole Peppercorns; boil these together, then strain them, add as much Butter with a little Flour as will do for Sauce; let it boil, and lay Sausages round the Fowl or Turky. Garnish with Lemon.

  —from The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, 1747

  WAVERLEY ROOT ON GUINEA FOWL

  Food, Waverley Root’s encyclopedia, was a later work after his better-known The Food of France and The Food of Italy. In the tradition of Dumas’s Le Grand Dictionnaire, it is completely arbitrary and whimsical, full of the writer’s own personal prejudices, which is exactly the way good food writing should be.

  —M.K.

  Ever since our poultry raisers succeeded in taking the taste out of turkey, the most flavorful bird of the barnyard has been the guinea fowl. This is perhaps because the guinea, though it lives on farms, has not resigned itself to being domesticated, and has consequently not completely lost the dark flesh of wild birds and their gamey taste; it is frequently compared with pheasant.

  As everyone who has raised guineas (I have) knows, they are virtually wild animals. They like to roost on the topmost branches of the tallest trees, and display no interest in coming down to be killed for dinner or for the market. They descend when grain is offered, but remain so wary that it is difficult to approach them; one suspicious movement from the farmer, and the whole flock is off. They can get along without his grain, for guineas are perfectly capable of foraging for themselves. Their acceptance of foods is wide, ranging from ants’ eggs, for which they will tear anthills open, to carrion. A French nature writer has reported seeing several guineas devouring, vulturelike, a large dead fox; and indeed guineas, with their bare unfeathered heads, do seem at times to resemble vultures; there is even an East African species called Acryllium vulturinum.

  One way of dealing with the difficulty of killing guineas is that which is sometimes utilized in southwestern France, shooting them down from their trees, but this is hardly practical for anyone handling guineas on a large scale; you bag one, and that is the last you see of the others for several days. Another solution is to keep them caged (in a cage the size of a small aviary, for they require space); but they will not lay in confinement, though they do so prolifically when free. Unlike many wild birds, which produce only one clutch a year, guinea hens lay continuously from May until cold weather sets in; but they do not lay in a fashion favorable to farmers. They hide their nests in hollows scratched out of the ground under bushes or other shelter where they are practically unfindable.

  As though this were not enough to discourage the raising of guinea fowl, they are also irascible and noisy. They cow other barnyard birds, even turkeys, though turkeys are much larger, and keep up an incessant nerve-wracking screeching, which has been described as sounding like the noise made by a rusty windmill. This racket is said to have the advantage of making it possible to distinguish the cocks from the hens (their plumage is identical), for while one sex cries pot-rack, pot-rack, pot-rack, the other repeats rack-pot, rack-pot, rack-pot; but this means of identification has never worked for me.

  One result of the guinea’s self-serving savagery seems to be its freedom from disease, in striking contrast to poultry which has benefited from the tinkering of man, like chickens and turkeys, which are subject to an interminable list of diseases and sometimes seem to take positive pleasure in succumbing to them. Despite this lone advantage, the difficulties have discouraged most poultry raisers (among whom was Thomas Jefferson, who was fond of them), so that, except in France, almost nobody attempts to produce guineas for a mass market. They appear as luxuries in high-priced restaurants which buy them directly from small-scale producers who aim exclusively at such outlets. This accounts for the fact that very few new varieties have been developed by breeders, the most important being white guineas, which, like white turkeys, seem to have been created to cater to a popular delusion that whiteness, a symbol of purity, guarantees finer flavor.

  In the days when Europeans were bestowing names on unfamiliar foods, any exotic product was apt to be ascribed more or less at random to any exotic locality, of which only a few, vaguely localized, were recognizable to the general public. The guinea fowl was an exception, identified correctly from the beginning as an African bird. Its origin is usually given as West Africa, which is, of course, where Guinea is located. The area is very probably the birthplace of Numida meleagris galatea, from which the imperfectly domesticated modern bird is supposed to have descended. Either this bird had acquired a wider range in classical times than is attributed to it now, or it was some other of the score of African species which the ancients, not given to fine nomenclatural distinctions, consumed. They had not adventured as far as Guinea, but they imported birds from North Africa. Greece, which knew them by 500 B.C., presumably received them from Egypt, the source of many of her foreign foods. Significantly, this bird is known in Italian today as gallina faraona, Pharaoh’s hen; but the Romans, when the guinea hen became an appreciated item on upper-class menus, apparently preferred to bring them in from nearer regions of North Africa, for they called them Numidian hens or Carthaginian hens—except when the host was putting on the dog, for a wedding banquet, say, when they might appear under such fancy names as Phrygian chicken (used on one Pompeiian menu which has come down to us) or Bohemian chicken, even more impressive, since Bohemia in those days was exquisitely exotic, a place of which Romans had heard but had never seen.

  The guinea fowl never got down to a common level in the ancient world, unlike the chicken, so when the Roman Empire disappeared, the guinea went with it. It does n
ot seem to have reappeared until the sixteenth century, when merchants from Portugal, by then in control of Guinea, started selling them to France, where they were first called, gyunettes or poules de Guinée and then, incorrectly, poules de Turquie or poules d’Inde, a name transferred shortly thereafter, with equal inexactitude, to the American turkey. The French naturalist Pierre Belon wrote in 1555 that guinea fowls “had already so multiplied in the houses of the nobles that they had become quite common.” This disposes of the often repeated assertion, by which, in the past, I have been taken in myself, that it was Catherine de’ Medici who introduced the guinea hen to France; actually the bird reached there before the marrying Medicis did. That it was indeed the Portuguese who brought the bird to France is attested to by its name in French today, pintade, from the Portuguese pintada, “painted,” or, in this case, “splotched,” referring to the round spots which speckle the guinea’s plumage. A Greek legend explained that the sisters of Meleager, son of the king of Calydon, were so grief-stricken when their brother died that they broke into uncontrollable weeping, which ended only when they were changed into guinea hens; the spots are their tears. Hence the ancient name meleagris for this bird, preserved by modern taxonomists in the scientific names given to many of its species.

  The guinea hen was also appreciated in Italy in Renaissance times; from Africa and Europe it has now spread all over the world. The first to reach the Far East may have been those which Pierre Poivre took to Cochin-China when, in 1749, he was negotiating for the right to open a French trading counter there. Among the presents he gave the king of Cochin-China were some guinea fowl, which according to his account were at that time unknown there. In the New World, they seem to have appeared first in Haiti, probably imported along with slaves bought in Guinea. Live poultry was often taken aboard ships, to provide fresh food during long voyages; Africa could not have provided chickens in those days, but it could offer guineas. We may suppose that the surplus birds of the ship’s stores, still alive at the end of the trip, were taken ashore.

  I notice with a certain surprise that many writers describe the guinea fowl as ugly. Despite its vulturelike head, it has always struck me as a notably decorative bird. Some of its varieties are so handsomely patterned that I can imagine their having been designed by Van Gogh.

  —from Food, 1980

  F. T. CHENG ON BIRD’S NEST

  I found F. T. Cheng’s little book for £5 in one of those small and dusty Charing Cross used-book shops. The title in English is Musings of a Chinese Gourmet, which is an apt description of the book. The cover also has Chinese characters on it that mean A Thesis on Living. The book was published in 1954 and the author, F. T. Cheng, was the former Chinese ambassador to Britain. This insightful book is not as obscure as I at first thought. From time to time, I find quotes from this book in British food books.

  —M.K.

  Therefore, there is nothing very extraordinary in that the Chinese should like shark’s fin, “Bird’s Nest,” and other “odd” things, which often only mean delicacies undiscovered. The shark, indeed, is a very ferocious animal, but its fin must be most harmless and the cleanest part of a fish. Well prepared, it is not only most delicious to the palate but also most wholesome to the system, because of the high percentage of calorie, protein, calcium, and phosphorus it contains, as already mentioned in the preceding chapter. It is the same with “Bird’s Nest.” The word “nest” is, perhaps, misleading. Some people may imagine that “Bird’s Nest Soup” is soup made simply from a bird’s nest pulled down from a tree grown, perhaps, in one’s own garden, boiled in water with or without the bird or its young, and then served with pepper and salt! The Chinese, who have survived for thousands of years and have contributed so many fundamental discoveries and inventions to the world, should be credited with a better sense than that. The so-called “Bird’s Nest” is no more and no less than predigested protein from some kind of sea weed gathered from the sea—not by the ordinary swallows as commonly believed, but by a particular specie of petrel of the Procellariidae family, living not on land but along the cliffs of the Pacific islands—and digested by the alkaline fluid of the mouths of these birds before using it for building their nests. As food it possesses a delicate flavour, which will be brought out by a tasty bouillon, and is specially rich in protein, particularly good for those who suffer from ulcerated stomach, as evidenced by Dr. Cotui’s recent discovery of the use of predigested protein for the treatment of that ailment. After all, Chinese taste for rare delicacies is by no means isolated. It finds a counterpart in the menu of a no less known restaurant than the Sports Afield Club, New York City, such as:

  Mexican Armadillo (for 4) $100.00

  Beaver & Beaver Tail 27.00

  South American Boar 18.00

  Caribou 75.00

  Australian Kangaroo 50.00

  Muskrat 62.00

  Porcupine 55.00

  Ostrich Eggs 35.00

  Water Buffalo 13.00

  Judged by the prices charged, these must be highly regarded as delicacies. With this observation, what are relished by the Chinese may now be discussed.…

  “Bird’s Nest.”

  Its real nature and nutritious properties have been noted. Its preparation is very simple. For one conventional dish use about three ounces, because it is very light. Soak it in lukewarm water for three hours. Pick out all the feathers that are found in it and wash it in cold water gently. When this is done it is clean and ready for cooking. Then cook it in one of the following ways in a double saucepan:

  (a) Stuff it into a whole chicken and cook it with seven cups of water until the chicken becomes quite tender. Then salt it to taste and serve it with the soup and chicken.

  (b) Cook it with plain but highly tasty chicken broth (enough for 10–12 persons) for two hours over a medium fire. Then salt it to taste and serve the whole thing as soup. As soon as it is dished, sprinkle over it two dessertspoonfuls of finely minced lean ham.

  (c) Cook it as in (b), salt it to taste, and thicken it with a little cornflour. At the same time mince finely an ounce or so of the white meat of a chicken, put this in two tablespoonfuls of cold water, beat up the white of one egg, and mix these well in a liquid form. When the soup is to be served, but not a moment before, pour the mixture into it, stirring well the whole thing. Take care that, before pouring the mixture into the soup, the fire is turned off; otherwise the minced chicken would be overdone and the soup would taste coarse. Lastly, when the soup is actually dished, sprinkle over it two dessertspoonfuls of finely minced lean ham. In taking “Bird’s nest” soup made in this way, it is recommended to add a little Chekiang vinegar, if any, which will enhance the taste.

  (d) “Bird’s nest” can be used as a sweet, in which case it is cooked in plain water for two hours over a medium fire and then sugared to taste. Crystal sugar should be used.

  It is interesting to note that “Bird’s nest” was known to the Chinese as a delicacy earlier than shark’s fin. When the Imperial Palace in Peking was taken over from the last Manchu Monarch, much unused “Bird’s nest” was found in the Provision Room with other food materials but practically no shark’s fin.

  —from Musings of a Chinese Gourmet, 1954

  LUDWIG BEMELMANS ON POULETS DE BRESSE

  When we came the next day to Vienne, we wanted to stop at the famous Pyramide, once, and perhaps still, one of the great temples of gastronomy. On that day the chef-proprietor of the establishment was in an off mood or else the publicity he had received had caused him to suffer from folie de grandeur: he had several near nervous breakdowns in our presence, screamed in his kitchen and behaved in his dining room like a police official rather than a restaurateur. It is as damaging to a low bistro as to the best of restaurants when the proprietor discovers that he is a rare and remarkable man with his pots and bottles. Upon seeing his picture in various publications and reading a description of himself he becomes obese with acquired personality.

  The specialties of the house he
re, besides a fine dish consisting of the tails of crayfish au gratin, is the chicken from Bresse. I have followed pigs on stilts looking for truffles and I know a little about the growing of grapes and the bottling of wine and the making of brandy, but the raising of chickens of Bresse is still a remote subject to me. It must, however, be a mammoth industry in France; for while you get hams from half a dozen places and even the sardine cans bear the names of various regions, the chicken served in a good restaurant in France is always from Bresse, and it is an excellent bird, as everyone will agree.

  I was able to arrest the attention of the proprietor of the Pyramide long enough to ask him about the chicken. He told me: “Of chickens I can tell you that they are never better than from September to February. Their meat then is well made and is not insipid. After February, the meat is not as tender nor as white. These we have now are young ones, four or five months old, and I am not too happy about them, for they have no character. We use them only for entrees. For the roasting chicken we must wait; it must be older. As for Bresse, I know as much about it as you do. I suppose Bresse is to chicken what Cologne is to water—some Eau de Cologne is made in Cologne, some in Paris. Some chickens come from Bresse; some people raise their own chickens of Bresse; some poulets de Bresse are raised right here in Vienne. At least those I serve are.”

  The chicken we were served was cooked in cream, flavored with estragon, and it was so-so. The wine, not being subject to the temper of cooks nor the season of chickens, was of the very best.

  —from Ludwig Bemelmans, La Bonne Table, 1964

  MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS ON KILLING BIRDS