SC - Kitchens

[DeeWolff]

> Another, totally unrelated query.  A non-SCA friend today came up with the
> comment that she was put off the whole medieval thing by the really cruel
> way they killed their animals for cooking.  She quoted a extract she'd seen
> in the programme for a Shakespeare production,  which purported to be from a
> medieval source she couldn't remember, and described cooking a goose by
> plunging it alive into boiling water and killing it slowly.  I've never come
> across anything like this in any medival sources with which I am familiar -
> it sounds horribly like one of those "medieval people threw their food
> around" sort of urban legends.  Can anyone identify this purported quote? 
> 
> Back to lurking and drooling,
> 
> Melisant

Well, plunging a bird into boiling water is, I'm told, a good way to
loosen feather quills from the skin for easy plucking. Now, logic says,
though this is my personal suspicion, mind you, that plunging a bird
that's alive into boiling water is a quick way to get burned by that
water as the bird is going to do its damndest to get back OUT of said
water. Common sense says that you quickly snap the neck of the bird
first, rather than afterwards.

Maybe your acquaintance is confusing lobster death methods for avian?
Lobsters are boiled alive in order to achieve that attractive red shell.
I wonder, does anyone know if boiling alive vs. boiling already dead
affects the taste of the lobster?

ciorstan
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