SC - Ostrich, and cruelty to geese

[Jessica Tiffin]

Greetings, the list!

At some stage in the dim, distant past, kat wrote:

<< Darkwood is a difficult place to try to serve "specialty meats;" and when
you consider the fact that out here they consider VENISON a specialty meat...
I could no more serve eel or ostrich here than fly to the moon.  I was pushing
it with the goose and the salmon...   >>

Ah, ostrich...  Given that this is readily and quite cheaply available in
South Africa: was it, in fact, eaten in period?  I know it was known as a
heraldic beastie and found in menageries (although my documentation for that
is a bit dicey... mere historical novels), but I've never heard of a recipe
- - has anyone else?  We have a Shire birthday feast coming up in may.  Mmmmm
- - whole roast ostrich.... always seemed to me to be the logical conclusion
to putting a lark inside a quail inside a chicken inside a goose inside a
pheasant, etc.

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

**********
Jessica Tiffin
melesine at ilink.nis.za  *  jessica at beattie.uct.ac.za
***********
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease.  It made
you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather).

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