[Sca-cooks] Peacock

[Honour Horne-Jaruk]

Respected friends:

--- On Tue, 4/5/11, Daniel Myers <dmyers at medievalcookery.com> wrote:
> 
> From what I've heard, turkey tastes a lot better than
> peacock, so it
> doesn't surprise me at all that it would be dropped from
> menus when a
> better tasting bird became available.
> 
> - Doc
     According to a friend of mine who says he ate much too much peacock as a child (his family raised them commercially, and when a male lost a fight badly enough he was dinner) the flavor of peacock is extremely dependent on their diet. Peacocks are nearly omnivorous, but their _preferred_ food, in his experience, was insects-- and he believed they specifically sought out the most vilely disgusting insects they could find, with the intent and purpose of tasting as nasty as possible. (In evolutionary terms, that almost makes sense.)
     One injured bird lingered in confinement for a few weeks, which led to his experimentally feeding it solely on peas. He says the flavor was "better, but not great"- although the fact that the bird did die of its injuries might have effected the taste at least as much as bugs would...  

Yours in service to both the Societies of which I am a member-
(Friend) Honour Horne-Jaruk, R.S.F.
Alizaundre de Brebeuf, C.O.L. S.C.A.- AKA Una the wisewoman, or That Pict

"If you're a normal human, the inside of your head is not a pretty
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