[Sca-cooks] Peacock

[Elise Fleming]

Eduardo wrote:
 >I so want to do a peacock with flames coming out of its beak!
 >Still not sure how to make that one happen.

IIRC, one period source said to use a piece of cotton soaked in camphor.

If one has access to Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC), Issue 32, there is 
an article entitled "The Great Birds, Part 4, Peacocks in History", 
written by Joop Witteveen.  The article includes a mention of "Marx 
Rumpoldt", 1581, who reported indigenous peacocks in Germany.  Witteveen 
also says that there are only two recipes for peacock (roasted and in a 
pie) in that book but that there are 20 for turkey, thus showing that 
peacock was on the way out.  He notes that by the middle of the 1500s, 
the fashion of roasting a peacock on a spit and redressing it in its 
feathers came to an end.  Peacock was now served in a pie but still 
sometimes decorated with the tail, wings, head and neck affixed to the 
top crust.

Alys K.
-- 
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
alyskatharine at gmail.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8311418@N08/sets/