[Sca-cooks] A bird bird bird- bird is the word!

[Terry Decker]

According to Platina, "The food most pleasing to quail is the seed of 
poisonous plants.  For this reason, in certain periods, foreign tables 
banished it, but not our cuisine, for in autumn qualea (for this is the way 
common people designate it) is in demand.  When it returns in the spring, it 
is considered tasteless and of bad nutriment.  I have eaten those caught on 
the shore at Anzio with my friend Julius, and nothing is more tasteless."

So apparently it was eaten, dependent upon time and place, but that other 
birds were considered preferable.

Bear

> As for other game birds, off the top of my head: partridge, pheasant, 
> goose, duck.  Quail was
> considered unwholesome until recently.  Apparently quail eat poisonous 
> plants, like Hellebore.
>
> Huette