[Sca-cooks] Cooking peacocks

[Johnna Holloway]

The last one that I personally saw done was in 2001. Lady Sarah nicLeod 
was the head cook
for the Crown feast that fall. From my saved messages she wrote this about
the plans on 9/24/2001:
Thanks All for the very helpful suggestions. This is going to be a 
really interesting project. The breeder and I had already agreed as I 
wanted to cook the bird so he collected the tail feathers from his 
mature bird for me this summer and I am going to fake the tail. The 
young males that we were going to butcher are not feathering in like 
he'd hoped and still have a lot of white on them. He has also ended up 
with many more females then males and has decided he would prefer to 
keep his males. As they weren't feathered out anyway I told him I would 
take a female instead which are white and gold. So, I'm going to have a 
peacock that is white and gold on the body with a blue green tail. It 
should be very interesting! Hauvette has some body feathers which I may 
try to blend in to the body to make a smoother transition into the tail. 
The breeder is going to butcher the bird for me soon (wring it's neck) 
and I am going to freeze the carcass until next month. I have course 
salt to dry the skin. My plan is to stuff the skin with salt and dry it 
in a box covered with salt in the position I want it to set. I decided 
to not try to make it stand at this point. Still haven't decided weather 
of not to try putting it over the roast bird.

Loved the idea of the bread coating over the roast bird so it doesn't 
dry out! Was worried about that!
Sarah nicLeod

So she took the feathers and skin and mounted those over a wire frame.
The hen or bird was actually
roasted and served separately. I gather from recent discussions on male 
peacocks that
serving a female might have been the thing to do as the meat from a male 
they said was
described as being far too strong.  I had done the only sugarwork for that
feast, so I was hanging around doing this and that until time to serve the
soteltie at the end. (I needed my mold back and we couldn't get the mold 
to release from
the sugarpiece without breaking.) I ended up helping Sarah with
the peacock. We ended up putting the tray with the fake bird on a 
serving cart
and having it served to the head table in that fashion. The one thing 
that we lacked when we got ready
to serve it was a way to make the tail feathers stand up or display out 
properly.
Some lightweight floral weight wire would have come in handy. They could 
have
looked better. Also there's always the problem getting the head to 
display at the right angle.

(I should mention that the last peacock I did was created out of 
marzipan and sugar icing. It was
lifesize.)

There's a good article on serving a peacock by Barbara Wheaton.
"How to cook a peacock." Harvard Magazine 82 (1979) pp 63-65.
Wheaton is the author of Savoring the Past.
Also see Petits Propos Culinaires --

THE GREAT BIRDS: PART 4, PEACOCKS IN HISTORY, Joop Witteveen 32,23

THE GREAT BIRDS, PART 5: PREPARATION OF THE PEACOCK FOR THE TABLE, Joop
Witteveen 36,10

http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/peacock/  laso has an article on them.

Johnnae

James/Alasdair mac Iain wrote:

>What would be the proper process for serving a peacock (or other bird) in 
>its feathers?  Just skin the bird carefully, roast it, and then pull the 
>skin back over the carcass?  Would anything special be done to the skin 
>while the bird itself was cooking?
>
>
>Alasdair mac iain 
>
>
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