[Sca-cooks] Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 2, Issue 85 Peafowl

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 17, 2006, at 6:26 PM, Marcus Loidolt wrote:

>   Benedicte,
>   I have it on good authority from my apprentice THL Robert Thorne,  
> who raises and sells peafowl that indeed any cock over a year of  
> age is practically inedible! He maintains that what MIGHT have  
> happened in period is to use the skin of an adult cock, tanned or  
> preserved and used to dress the carcass of another bird, perhaps a  
> younger peafowl, perhaps something else..
>   Robert maintains that the musk and testosterone produced by a  
> courting cock renders the meat very...pardon the pun, but foul!!
>
>   I have helped slaughter peafowl before, as an experiment, and  
> found this to be true! The young birds, upto 8 months of age were  
> fine to eat, the male birds older than a year...BLAH!!!! Mature  
> females didn't taste bad, but were of course tougher...
>
>   Abot Johann
>   medieval poultrier

I don't have the details of the cooking process at my fingertips, but  
it seems at least possible that some side effects of the cooking  
process for many such meats might actually serve to both reduce  
strong flavors and tenderize the meat. I mean, you're skinning the  
bird, and such meats were often lightly parboiled or at least  
scalded, and then larded before roasting. I do STR peacocks being  
assumed to be extremely hot and dry meats; parboiling before roasting  
would make a lot of sense from the contemporary medical viewpoint.

You can roast larded meats slowly for a long time, certainly until  
tender, and they don't really dry out...

I guess there's no possibility these peacocks were slaughtered in  
some manner that might put some nice juicy adrenalin into the meat, huh?

Not that I'm questioning your statements; I'm just trying to look at  
it from all angles.

Adamantius