SC - FW: turkeys & peacocks

[Christi Redeker]

This is forwarded from the Arts list.  Any input here.  I though Turkeys
were not period at all...  See what I get for thinking.

Murkial

Christi Redeker
Digital Equipment Corporation
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Christi.redeker at digital.com

- -----Original Message-----
From:	Tim & Wendy [SMTP:timwendy at avalon.net]
Sent:	Wednesday, February 04, 1998 7:55 PM
To:	sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject:	Re: turkeys & peacocks

Thomas Tusser (in a book first published in 1557) also linked peacocks
and
turkeys.

In his chapter called "February's Husbandry", verse 12 reads:
Stick plenty of boughs among runcival pease,
To climber thereon, and to branch at their ease ;
So doing, more tender and greater they wex,
If peacock and turkey leave jobbing their bex.

The editor of the 1812 edition adds this note:
It appears that turkeys and peacocks were commonly kept in the time of
Tusser, or he would not have alluded to their depredations on pease. A
peacock is now a rara avis. Though the most beautiful of domestic fowls,
he
is far from being profitable.

The complete citation for the book is:

Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, as well for the Champion, or Open
Country, as for the Woodland or Several; together with a Book of
Huswifery.
Being a Calendar of rural and domestic Economy, for every Month in the
Year; and exhibiting a Picture of the Agriculture, Customs, and Manners
of
England, in the sixteenth Century. By Thomas Tusser, Gentleman. A new
Edition, with notes, georgical, illustrative, and explanatory, a
glossary,
and other improvements by William Mavor, LL.D., Honary member of the
Board
of Agriulture.  London: Printed for Lackington, Allen, and Co., 1812.

At 05:39 PM 2/4/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Turkey was a raging sucess as soon as it was introduced into Europe,
>around 1530 or so.  It looked like peacock, one of the traditional
>show-off feast fowl--served with its feathers put back after roasting.
>However, turkey is much more tender and tasty than peacock, so it was
>popular at once.  Most of western Europe was eating it, at least in the
>upper classes--try looking for recipes that refer to 'dinde' which is
>the French word for turkey.  I know there are Tudor recipes out there,
>but I can't think where just now.


Ailene ingen Aedain
Shire of Shadowdale, Calontir
mailto:timwendy at avalon.net
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