It's the one year anniversary of Tasting History, and so I was thinking
we need to do a dish with some spectacle, and luckily for us history is filled with
spectacular dishes that are spectacular just for the sake of being spectacular.
Word of caution,
if you have a delicate constitution consider this your warning about today's recipe,
because today we are making the spectacular and legendary
cockentrice. A half pig, half bird
creature of myth found on the banquet tables of medieval and Tudor England.
So if you are still with me after that wish me luck in honing my surgical skills. This time on Tasting History.
So to be quite frank I never actually thought that I would make this recipe. It kind of seemed like
a bit of a bridge too far even for me, but
I did have a weird curiosity about it after researching it
for the video on capons that I did back at the very early days
of Tasting History, and so after a few cocktails I'm sure
I did decide that for the one year anniversary
I would make this dish which is very likely to make me into a vegetarian.
Now the earliest recipe I could actually find for this
comes from The Forme of Cury in the 14th century, one of my favorite sources but it's actually for
the cokagrys, so it's an earlier form of the word.
It's a portmanteau of cocc meaning capon and grys meaning a small pig from the old Norse.
Now I have no actual proof of this but I figured that it was also a play on the word
cockatrice which was a mythical dragon, or serpent-like beast with the head of a rooster.
Just makes sense. It can't be a coincidence that the words are so close
to each other, and mean two animals like made into a new one. Just can't be a coincidence.
There are also two 15th century manuscripts for the same dish, but spelled cockentrice or cokyntryce,
and basically all three dishes are the same except for minor variations especially in what they're stuffed with.
For my part I'm going to be using the 15th century Douce Manuscript 55 because it is the most complete.
"Cockentrice: Scald a capon clean and cut him in two at the waist,
and scald a pig, and drain him, and cut him in the same manner...
and then sew the fore part of the pig and the hind part of the capon together;
Then mix the white and the yolks of eggs, and cast thereto, and suet of a sheep and saffron,
and salt and powder of ginger and grated bread;
and mix all together with your hands, and put it in the cockentrice,
and put it on a spit, and roast him;
and endore him with yolks of egg, and powder of ginger,
and saffron, and juice of parsley or mallow, and clean him and endore him in every part of him."
Now all three recipes actually call for you to make two cockentrice. You would take
the front half of the capon, and the back half of the pig and make another one so you're not wasting anything.
I don't need to have two of those plus my capon doesn't actually have a head or anything because you can't buy them that way mostly these days,
if you can even find a capon which I did,
but I am saving the other two halves and we'll probably put them on the smoker so they will be used.
So for the two main ingredients you need the front half of a suckling pig 15 to 20
pounds and the back half of a capon, or a small turkey will also work if you can't find a capon.
Also I would really ask the butcher to cut these in half for you because it's not going to be easy otherwise.
For the amounts of the filling it really depends on the size of the pig so here is a general outline.
Twenty to thirty eggs, two cups of suet, a large pinch of saffron, one and a half
to two tablespoons of salt, one tablespoon of ground ginger,
and two or three loaves of stale bread.
I'd use something that has a little bit of flavor to it. Don't just get white bread
even though that was probably the most fancy back then, Manchet bread, but it's going to have the least amount of flavor.
Now at the end of the recipe it says that you endore the cockentrice
and that means to color gold which was an extremely popular thing to do in the Middle ages,
and for that you'll need two dozen egg yolks, two tablespoons of ginger, a large pinch of saffron,
and a bunch of parsley turned into juice. It is painstaking to turn parsley into juice.
Probably easier if i had a juicer, but I don't.
So you shouldn't need to scald and drain the animals
because that should have been taken care of by the butcher and the poulterer but you do
want to make sure that they are clean and spotless inside and out,
and then let the sewing commence.
It actually was not as hard as I thought it was. I used surgical sutures
because I figured that would be the easiest and cleanest way to do it, and and it worked like a
worked like a jiff BUT
I would NEVER do it again.
Then beat your eggs and add in the ginger, salt,
saffron, and the suet.
Then break up your bread into breadcrumbs
and add the egg mixture.
Then mix it together with your hands just as the recipe commands,
then stuff the stuffing into the cockentrice, and sew up the belly.
Then if you have a spit at home that's what you're supposed to use, but I don't have a spit.
I have a tiny kitchen and I live in a condo,
so I used a roasting pan and put it in the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit,
or 150 degrees Celsius for about three and a half hours.
Now the length that you cook it actually kind of depends on the size of what you're cooking,
but you want a thermometer stuck into the middle of the stuffing
to be 165 degrees Fahrenheit, or 74 degrees Celsius.
So what's interesting is that these two meats the pig and the capon,
they're going to cook at different rates so I actually ended up tenting
the back of the capon just so it wouldn't dry out too much near the end of the cooking process, but
you have to remember that this dish was not so much about the actual flavor, it was about the
look of it so they didn't really care.
Now once you get close to that internal temperature kick up
the heat to 450 Fahrenheit or 230 Celsius just to let the skin crisp for about 10 minutes.
Now while our cockentrice roasts in the oven I want to take this opportunity to thank you so much for watching
and supporting Tasting History over the past year. It turned what was a really horrible event,
my getting furloughed into one of the most amazing years of my life.
So thank you whether you were there at the very beginning with Medieval cheese,
or you joined me with garum or melas zomos,
or today with the cockentrice if that's your first dish, and I kind of worry if it is,
but thank you. Thank you so, so much.
Now I'm not going to go into all of the history of Tasting History
this year, because there is a lot of it but we have started a secondary channel
called Ketchup with Max (and Jose) where we basically do go into each episode,
and kind of get more into the details, and answer questions that I didn't answer in the episode,
and ramble about you know other things that have gone on during this astounding year (& cats, Pokemon, etc),
and speaking of astounding let's talk about some other astounding dishes from history.
Now for most of us food is for eating but at certain times in history there have been
certain dishes that have come along where eating was really secondary to there being a spectacle.
Acts of comestible theater, if you will.
Think of the four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
That was real. They actually made pies where there would be live birds that would come out of them.
Now I don't think that anyone was actually eating the pie, I hope not, because how you trained
birds to you know hold their bladder and other things that entire time, I don't think they did,
so I wouldn't eat that pie.
No, no, no thank you. Though I was going to hold out for the apple pie?
There are no birds in the apple pie, right?
Now when it comes to the cockentrice it really just played one role
in a complete cast of crudely concocted chimera. See Medieval and Tudor chefs
loved creating new creatures out of old animals, not sure why.
There are stories about adding wings to cows and having entire table length creatures made of different sections
of other animals kind of like our cockentrice on steroids.
I mean this was a time when they would re-feather an entire peacock before putting it out to eat
or they would put an entire cooked dolphin,
the whole thing on the table. Crazy!
And in the 14th century cookbook Le Viander de Taillevent
there is a dish called the Coqz Heaumez or helmeted cock.
It was basically a roasted bird riding astride a roasted pig, and the bird
"needs a helmet of paper and a lance couched at its breast.
And this should be covered in gold and silver leaf for lords."
Actually The Forme of Cury version of the cockentrice recipe has it covered in gold foil at the end which is why I didn't choose
that recipe because I'm not going to start a Kickstarter to do a dish.
Now another way that they used food as theater were through the ironically named
subtleties which I go into detail about in the episode on History of Sugar Part 1.
These were elaborate sculptures made of almond paste or sugar, an extremely expensive ingredient at the time.
It would be like having an ice sculpture now if water cost a hundred dollars a gallon.
In 1527 Cardinal Wolsey who you'll know if you ever watch the Tudors
held a feast to impress the French ambassador
"Anon came up the second course, with so many dishes, subtleties, and curious devices,
which were above a hundred in number,
of so goodly portion and costly that I suppose the Frenchman never saw the like...
There were castles ..., Paul's church and steeple. There were beasts, birds, fowls of divers kinds,
and personages..., some fighting, as it were with swords, some with guns and crossbows...,
some dancing with ladies... and with many more devices than I am able with my wit to describe."
I really can't tell if that's a humble brag at the end.
Even my wit can't describe these things, if it is I'm stealing it.
Now this idea of using food as theater is of course not limited to Medieval and Renaissance Europe.
Apicius talks at length about the fanciful foods at some ancient Roman feasts,
things like flamingo tongue and honeyed dormouse,
and in Feudal Japan banquets where each dish was a work of art
meant to be coupled with an actual song or an act of drama were commonplace for the elite.
Though I think that one of my favorite historic dishes that was ostentatious to the
point of really not being a realistic dish to make
is the rôti sans pareil, or roast without equal.
It came from the mind of Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimond de la Reynière,
even his name was over the top. I just love this guy.
He's a little bit crazy. He was one of the first published food writers
but he was talking about the food scene in early 19th century France. In L'Almanach Des Gourmands.
Tangent here. I think my favorite story about Grimond is actually about his funeral.
It was 1812 and people were invited to his funeral on the day that it was happening.
When they showed up there was a hearse outside and a coffin laid out on the table.
The dinner table. Everybody sits down
a little confused and then out comes Grimond and he says
dinner is served.
See he just wanted to see who would actually show up to his funeral
especially if it took place during dinner time.
Now we don't know what was served at this funeral meal,
but we can guess that it was probably not this rôti sans pareil, roast without equal.
The roast without equal is called an engastration, and that is where a bird or or any animal actually
is cooked inside of another animal like the turducken.
Though the turducken is three birds: turkey, duck, chicken.
The roast without equal
is 17.
You take a caper and an achovy, and put that into a warbler,
then wrap that in an ortolan bunting, then squish that inside of a lark,
that gets stuffed into a thrush which is inside of a quail, which is cloaked in a lapwing.
That all gets enveloped by a plover, which is jammed inside of a partridge, and then
"Put this partridge in the body of a young woodcock, Tender like mademoiselle Volnais, succulent and well kept."
Classy guy. I'm sure mademoiselle Volnais really appreciated being included in his recipe.
Now your succulent woodcock is then sheathed inside of a teal which is packed within a guinea folw.
Swaddle that inside of a duck, and immerse him in the belly of a hen.
The hen you stuff inside of a pheasant who is bundled up inside of
a goose, and then this,
the most swollen goose that ever was
is put inside of a turkey, which is wrapped in a bustard.
In between each bird there are layers of bacon and chestnuts and ground meat, and then everything
is stewed with fresh herbs and vegetables.
Just a nice light dish for a quiet evening at home.
Never making that by the way, so don't even ask. I don't even think I could find like 14 of those birds.
The cockentrice is as far as I go.
Now there is one bird in that dish that has its own fantastic
history of how it is spectacularly eaten, and that is the ortolan bunting.
Now eating this bird is actually illegal in most places, and where it is legal it is strictly controlled,
and the way that it's eaten typically is that it lives its life in a very dark cage where it feasts on millet,
and then it is drowned in fine armagnac.
Then the bird is plucked and roasted and eaten whole,
and the act of eating this bird is considered so shameful and so decadent
that the person eating is supposed to wear a napkin over their face to hide their shame from God.
Dramatic simply for the sake of being dramatic,
and you could kind of say the same thing about our cockentrice which should be about ready to endore.
So first whisk your egg yolks, and add in the saffron, the parsley juice,
and the ginger, and whisk everything together.
So after that 10 or 15 minutes at the raised temperature
he should be nice and crispy. So take him out,
and brush him with the egg yolk mixture.
Then put him back in the oven for a minute or two, and then repeat
three or four times or until he's nice and golden.
And here we are, the legendary cockentrice.
As you can see I had a bit of trouble cutting into him,
but eventually I got what I needed.
So let's give the pork a try first.
Hm.
Very saffron-y.
The pork is good I mean it tastes like pork. I've had roast pig before and
that's what it tastes like, though with more saffron.
Now the Capon.
It's a bit of the white meat I think. That's not dry.
Shocking.
Definitely gamier than a typical chicken, and I actually like that.
I like a gamey flavor.
It's good, quite good. Let me try some of the stuffing.
Hmm!
I really like the stuffing.
The stuffing is actually my favorite part,
which is kind of
horrible.
They're all very good. I mean considering what it is. It's actually very simple.
It's just- it's basically ham and chicken.
There's nothing weird about it. It's something that you would eat today,
it's just put together in a very unorthodox manner,
but it's tasty,
but in all honesty don't ever make this dish. Just get a ham, get a chicken, you're fine.
I mean I'm glad that I did it for the sake of history, but
it shouldn't be done again. It's you know, it's kind of-
it shouldn't be done again.
So that is the one year anniversary dish of Tasting History.
Let me know in the comments what your favorite episodes this year have been.
We've got some really cool stuff coming up, got some Egyptian recipes, ancient Egyptian, Japanese, trying to really get outside of Europe,
though of course lots more European and American dishes as well.
Also I am really getting to work on the cookbook
as I just signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to have a cookbook come out next year.
So thank you again for watching Tasting History.
Make sure to Subscribe, Like this video and Subscribe to Ketchup with Max (and Jose),
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.