Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. Hey, what are we
Speaker 3: talking about today, Rob?
Speaker 2: Oh, we're getting into feasting season here, Joe. So we're
Speaker 2: gonna do what we've done in the past, devote an
Speaker 2: episode to food, but not just you know, just any food.
Speaker 2: In the past, we've talked about dangerous foods. We did
Speaker 2: several episodes on that. You can find those if you
Speaker 2: go back into the archives. But this time we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking particularly about some various feast dishes, some
Speaker 2: outrageous feast dishes, and then also some sort of related
Speaker 2: tangential subject matter that's sort of swirling around those dishes.
Speaker 3: I'm salivating the thought of the beauties and the grotesqueries
Speaker 3: to follow.
Speaker 2: Yes, dishes of over indulgence, you might call them, and
Speaker 2: such dishes exist throughout the history of human feasting. As
Speaker 2: long as human populations have even periodically experienced surplus and
Speaker 2: or inequality, there's been room for dishes that simply go
Speaker 2: above and beyond what seems reasonable. Decadent delicacies occupied the
Speaker 2: tables of the ancient Romans. We'll mention a few, and
Speaker 2: of course still to this day we find such dishes
Speaker 2: on our tables.
Speaker 3: Okay, but I know you got crankin' on this topic
Speaker 3: because you were interested in one particular example from history, right.
Speaker 2: That's right, one that you know. I think I've had
Speaker 2: like a vague familiarity with for a long time, because
Speaker 2: I feel like I've seen depictions of it before. I'm
Speaker 2: really struggling to figure out if I've actually seen a
Speaker 2: depiction of this in a film or TV show. But
Speaker 2: it's possible because it's a great way to sort of
Speaker 2: center what's going on in your setting. But yeah, we're
Speaker 2: going to turn to fifteenth century year. So the Middle
Speaker 2: Ages are giving way to the first stirrings of the Renaissance,
Speaker 2: and it's just prime time to sew a suckling pig
Speaker 2: and a chicken together and serve it to a bunch
Speaker 2: of nobles and royals. A lot of great things come
Speaker 2: out of the Renaissance, yes, but there are some There
Speaker 2: are some real clunkers that come out of it as well,
Speaker 2: And this, I don't know, this could be one of them, can't.
Speaker 2: I have not tried it. I will not be trying it,
Speaker 2: but it is not impossible that some of you out
Speaker 2: there have tried it. The addition question is the cock
Speaker 2: and trice not to be confused with another word that
Speaker 2: you may find not in a menu from Tutor England,
Speaker 2: but more likely in a bestiary.
Speaker 3: That's right, So this other word is cock a trice
Speaker 3: rather than cock en trice. It's easy to confuse the two.
Speaker 3: They are phonetically similar, spelled similarly, but different things altogether.
Speaker 3: Now I'm not going to go extremely deep here because
Speaker 3: the cock a trice subject will have some overlap with
Speaker 3: our past discussions of the mythical monster known as the basilisk.
Speaker 3: These creatures were in many cases, not all, but in
Speaker 3: many cases treated as the same thing. A cockatrice is
Speaker 3: sort of a loosely defined monster, usually combining Avian and
Speaker 3: Reptilian features or associations. Sometimes it is kind of straightforwardly
Speaker 3: a wivern. It's like a dragon with two legs, no
Speaker 3: little t rex arms, just the two legs and then
Speaker 3: two wings and then a rooster's head. It appears in
Speaker 3: this form or roughly this form in some medieval manuscripts
Speaker 3: and some heraldry, but in other cases it's described as
Speaker 3: a kind of fantastically venomous serpent, or as a serpent
Speaker 3: that hatches from a cock's egg, sometimes after like a
Speaker 3: cock egg is incubated by a reptile or a toad. Generally,
Speaker 3: a cockatrice is news. It is a venomous monster or
Speaker 3: a monster that kills everything around it. Though there is
Speaker 3: an interesting sort of literary history of this word, because
Speaker 3: if you go reading the King James translation of the Bible,
Speaker 3: you will find lots of references to the cockatrice as
Speaker 3: a kind of beast or venomous monster. A couple of
Speaker 3: examples I dug up. One is from the Book of Isaiah,
Speaker 3: chapter fifty nine, verses four to five, which say, none
Speaker 3: calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth. They trust
Speaker 3: in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring
Speaker 3: forth iniquity. They hatch cockatrice eggs and weave the spider's web.
Speaker 3: He that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which
Speaker 3: is crushed breaketh out into a viper. Common theme you
Speaker 3: will get in some of the Old Testament books of
Speaker 3: the prophets, is, you know, comparing wickedness and sin and
Speaker 3: lack of moral virtue to venomous in and predatory animals,
Speaker 3: dangerous beasts.
Speaker 2: So no hatching cockatrice eggs. That's what I'm taking for
Speaker 2: the scripture.
Speaker 3: That's not a good thing to do. That you bring
Speaker 3: forth iniquity. Another good one I found just this one
Speaker 3: was a little pithier. This is from the Book of Jeremiah,
Speaker 3: chapter eight, verse seventeen, again the King James translation. It says,
Speaker 3: for behold, I will send serpents. Cockatrice is among you,
Speaker 3: which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you,
Speaker 3: saith the Lord.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, let's stay to the point.
Speaker 3: They shall bite you. Now. The word cockatrice does not
Speaker 3: appear in later translations of the Bible that are are
Speaker 3: better informed about what the original Greek and Hebrew words
Speaker 3: that are being translated usually mean. The English usage of
Speaker 3: cockatrice in the Bible traces back to John Wickliffe's English
Speaker 3: translation of the Old Testament, in which a Hebrew word
Speaker 3: that probably originally referred to like a snake of venomous
Speaker 3: reptile is taken as referring to this strange monster which
Speaker 3: was already sort of in consciousness, in part derived from
Speaker 3: stories that go back to plenty of the elder and
Speaker 3: I think we've actually talked about these stories before in
Speaker 3: our episodes on the basilisk. But the cockatrice also has
Speaker 3: some interesting etymological confusion in its history because the English
Speaker 3: word cockatrice is recorded as far back as Late Middle English.
Speaker 3: It's derived from an Old French term cockatrice, which in
Speaker 3: turn comes from the Latin calcatrix, So it's not actually
Speaker 3: related to the English word or the French word cock,
Speaker 3: which meaning like, you know, a rooster, which that's the
Speaker 3: imagery we see in like this heraldry, where it's a
Speaker 3: dragon with a rooster's head or somehow a cock's egg
Speaker 3: that is hatched in conjunction with reptile interference. Instead, it
Speaker 3: goes back to the Latin calcatrix, which means she who treads.
Speaker 3: The Latin verb here is calcare, meaning to tread. So
Speaker 3: a calcatrix is a female entity who treads. So there's
Speaker 3: some more word confusion for you, but the main point
Speaker 3: being that a cockatrice is a monster and a cockin
Speaker 3: trice is something completely different. It is the food that
Speaker 3: we're about to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I can't promise that the word is just
Speaker 2: going to get any easier to digest. But yeah, the
Speaker 2: cock and trice, to be clear, is a composite dish.
Speaker 2: So in the front you have a suckling pig and
Speaker 2: in the back a turkey or capon. Capon is a
Speaker 2: neutered male chicken. So the result is a feast item
Speaker 2: of intrigue, as if the folks present for the meal
Speaker 2: are being served not an animal of the mundane world,
Speaker 2: but rather some fantastic hybrid that belongs, perhaps in a
Speaker 2: bestiary alongside the cock a trice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, make you monsters out of our food, a tradition
Speaker 3: that is not entirely gone, by the way. I'm sure
Speaker 3: many people listening have seen like viral images of this
Speaker 3: sort that get shared around the internet. One that very
Speaker 3: much sticks in my mind is whoever first had the
Speaker 3: idea to make a face hugger from the Alien series
Speaker 3: out of like a turkey's body with some crab legs
Speaker 3: on the side, and then a tail made out of
Speaker 3: like a stuffed sausage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's send me that photos. It's quite horrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes you want to eat them.
Speaker 2: You know, and you know, even you know, vegans and
Speaker 2: vegetarians get in on the action as well. I know,
Speaker 2: in my household. It has become a tradition. On Halloween
Speaker 2: we make a dish that is known by a few
Speaker 2: different names. You and I, I think both know it
Speaker 2: as feet of meat. It has also been called feet loaf.
Speaker 2: I know Amy Sedaris calls it as such, but essentially
Speaker 2: it is meat loaf. Were in our case we was like,
Speaker 2: you know, imitation meat that takes the form of one
Speaker 2: or two disembodied bloody feet.
Speaker 3: Beautiful. That's so nice.
Speaker 2: So you know, I can't be too judging about all
Speaker 2: this because I totally do it as well. Now, as
Speaker 2: for the cock and trice here, I looked up some
Speaker 2: more info on this in a book from Terry Breverton
Speaker 2: called The Tutor Kitchen, and he goes into a little
Speaker 2: more detail here mentions that the way you make one
Speaker 2: of these things is that you first of all, you
Speaker 2: of course butcher the two animals in question, and then
Speaker 2: once you've butchered them, you know you've removed everything. You
Speaker 2: know you don't need to be part of the finished meal,
Speaker 2: you know how butchering works. You stitch these together, then
Speaker 2: you stuff it as you would often stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: various feast items as turkeys are still stuffed to this day,
Speaker 2: you know, for Thanksgiving in America, and then you roast
Speaker 2: it on a spit per, you know, the usual treatment
Speaker 2: of the day. Now. Originally the dish, according to Breverton,
Speaker 2: was known as cock a griss in this or perhaps
Speaker 2: catt agriss. And this is combining the words for cock
Speaker 2: and gris a suckling pig. That being said, it does,
Speaker 2: I mean, I couldn't find much where people are really
Speaker 2: talking about the comparison between these two words. It seems
Speaker 2: to me that if the word for the monster cock
Speaker 2: a trice is at all in some form like floating
Speaker 2: around in one's vocabulary, then cock in trice is some
Speaker 2: sort of an allusion to that. But I couldn't find
Speaker 2: any hard answers on that. There are also various other
Speaker 2: spellings for the food item here the cock and trice,
Speaker 2: as well as fifteenth century recipes that lay out the
Speaker 2: steps to produce one. And this has long been a novelty.
Speaker 2: It was a novelty when it was served on the
Speaker 2: tables and Tutor England. And you can look around. You
Speaker 2: can find various videos online of modern chefs and amateur
Speaker 2: chefs and streamers recreating it for entertainment purposes and for
Speaker 2: exploration purposes, like there's nothing you know, there's nothing you
Speaker 2: know you know off the board occurring in the creation
Speaker 2: of this dish. I was looking around at various people
Speaker 2: that were either talking directly about it or sometimes just
Speaker 2: invoking it. As an example of the latter, I saw
Speaker 2: a work by a writer by the name of Karen
Speaker 2: Robber who described or raper, who describes it as performing meat,
Speaker 2: which I thought was an interesting phrase. Like the meat
Speaker 2: in this case is not just here for your consumption.
Speaker 2: One would assume it is also supposed to taste good.
Speaker 2: But on top of that, it is like the sheer
Speaker 2: performance of the presentation, which you know that's going to
Speaker 2: be president a lot of meals, but like it becomes
Speaker 2: part of the forefront in a case like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I might have some different terminology that we could
Speaker 3: apply to this category later in the episode, but I'd
Speaker 3: say I primarily think of this as stunt food.
Speaker 2: Stunt food is good. Yeah, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Food that's not just to be eaten, it's also to
Speaker 3: be admired as an act.
Speaker 2: Yes. So Reverenson's book contains numerous other at least from
Speaker 2: my vantage point, strange tudor dishes. We can all disagree
Speaker 2: on this, and you know, and ultimately, I'm sure there
Speaker 2: are examples of similar dishes in various culinary traditions and
Speaker 2: cultures where it's like totally not weird for you to
Speaker 2: eat it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, what is weird in terms of
Speaker 3: food is totally a matter of social and cultural expectations.
Speaker 3: It's like what's familiar to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when I say it sounds weird to me,
Speaker 2: it's weird because I'm imagining the tutors eating this. But
Speaker 2: this particular book includes references to such dishes as sliced
Speaker 2: cow tongue, pie, boiled badger, boiled viper, swan with blood,
Speaker 2: and entrail sauce.
Speaker 3: Oh delicious.
Speaker 2: This one really gave my wife pause. Cow's utters in
Speaker 2: mustard sauce. I'm not sure like where like that one
Speaker 2: kind of hits in various ways, like when it's the utters,
Speaker 2: but then also the mustard sauce. I really have a
Speaker 2: hard time picturing.
Speaker 3: This cow's utters in sweet and sour sauce I think
Speaker 3: would work better.
Speaker 2: And then also multiple peacock recipes, yes, peacocks.
Speaker 3: Now, wait, now that I'm thinking about it, why don't
Speaker 3: any like of these fast food chains have a dipping
Speaker 3: sauce for your nuggets that is blood and entrail sauce.
Speaker 2: I mean they could with the right market, you could
Speaker 2: call it that and people would go nuts for it.
Speaker 2: But these peacock recimees, Oh my goodness, I think I
Speaker 2: in the past I'd run across examples of people eating
Speaker 2: peacocks as a feast food, but I often forget about
Speaker 2: it because I end up. You know, you see peacocks everywhere.
Speaker 2: They've spread. They've been introduced rather all over the world
Speaker 2: from the Indian subcontinent, so most of you, I think
Speaker 2: I've probably seen one. You know, they walk around the
Speaker 2: males of the spece. These the peacocks, you know, look
Speaker 2: dazzling with their feathers, and then of course you have
Speaker 2: the pea hens, the females. More on the particulars in
Speaker 2: just a second, but yes, recipes for this include the
Speaker 2: gilded peacock. This is a sixteen sixty one recipe that
Speaker 2: calls for the spit roasted bird to be covered with
Speaker 2: gold leaf and recovered in the peacock's skin and feathers
Speaker 2: after it's been for the So you butcher it, you
Speaker 2: set aside those gorgeous feathers and its skin, and then
Speaker 2: you put it all back together with gold leaf quote
Speaker 2: for recreation and for magnificence. According to doctor John Wex,
Speaker 2: there's eighteen books of the Secrets of Art in Nature
Speaker 2: from sixteen sixty one.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a book by like John d Or Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like it would be alchemical in nature
Speaker 2: and not about eating.
Speaker 3: A peacock, not about how to have fun with peacock corpses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense. If you
Speaker 2: can eat the peacock, you want to admire the feathers.
Speaker 3: Yes. So.
Speaker 2: The p foul, as we may more accurately describe these creatures,
Speaker 2: consist of three different species. There are two asiatic peacocks
Speaker 2: native to the Indian subcontinent, and there's also a congo
Speaker 2: p fowl that is apparently actually not a true p fowl.
Speaker 2: The Indian p foul is the key species for our
Speaker 2: concerns here, notable for the splendid mating displays made by
Speaker 2: the male peacocks that surely everyone has seen. The bird
Speaker 2: was introduced as a novelty into Europe, traditionally held as
Speaker 2: being introduced by the Macedonian general Alexander the Great during
Speaker 2: the fourth century BCE, but something it might have occurred
Speaker 2: earlier than that. It's an interesting bird in its own right,
Speaker 2: and we could probably devote an entire episode to it,
Speaker 2: no doubt, exploring its place, for example, in the history
Speaker 2: of evolutionary theory, one of the many animals that ends
Speaker 2: up being invoked in scientific discourse of the day. Instead
Speaker 2: of all that, though, I want to cut right to
Speaker 2: some interesting religious contexts for the peacock from Indian traditions,
Speaker 2: and for this I turned once more to Krishna's Sacred
Speaker 2: Animals of India. This is from Penguin Press. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to go through everything that the author shares here,
Speaker 2: but I want to hit some of the key points.
Speaker 2: So first of all, the peacock, this is not really
Speaker 2: religious at all, but the peacock is a national bird
Speaker 2: of India. Getting into religious traditions, the peacock is held
Speaker 2: as the animal form of the sky god Indra. Also,
Speaker 2: it said that Indra granted the peacock its beautiful colors
Speaker 2: after one of them extended its sale to hide him
Speaker 2: during a battle with the demon king Ravana. The peacock
Speaker 2: is an enemy of snakes and represents victory over evil tendencies.
Speaker 2: And this is apparently based on real life, because peacocks
Speaker 2: in their natural habitat do eat small snakes. And of
Speaker 2: course this reminds me a little bit of talking of
Speaker 2: what we've talked about concerning the Kaka trice and the
Speaker 2: basilisk oh.
Speaker 3: I don't think I even mentioned this at the time,
Speaker 3: but some sources say that the kaokatrice the monster can
Speaker 3: have a couple of enemies. One is the cry of
Speaker 3: the rooster, so like the rooster's call can sort of
Speaker 3: invalidate the cockatrice's magic or banish it. And then another
Speaker 3: idea is that the weasel is the enemy of the
Speaker 3: cockatrice and can defeat it.
Speaker 2: The peacock is also held to be the vehicle of
Speaker 2: the war god Kartaikia. The crown of Lord Krishna often
Speaker 2: features peacock feathers. It's apparently just generally a common symbol
Speaker 2: of beauty throughout Hindu literature, often associated with joy as
Speaker 2: well as Rain and Krishna. The writer here not the
Speaker 2: mythological figure, also mentions that some traditions hold that Sita,
Speaker 2: the love of Rama, was born from the egg of
Speaker 2: a pea hen. He also mentions that the peacock may
Speaker 2: represent compassion and watchfulness in Buddhist traditions, and that in
Speaker 2: Tibetan Buddhism there are also connotations of immortality which will
Speaker 2: come back to in a second, and a symbol for
Speaker 2: the universal antidote against the poisonous human emotional states. And
Speaker 2: in Jainism, the peacock feather may ward away evil. And
Speaker 2: then finally, he also mentions in passing that peacocks are
Speaker 2: apparently mentioned in the Bible as an import of King Solomon. Now,
Speaker 2: during the medieval period in Europe, they were favorite inclusions
Speaker 2: in menageries and gardens, becoming important in European heraldry, textiles
Speaker 2: and art, and of course they also came up as
Speaker 2: a prized food item. And yet even as this exotic
Speaker 2: bird is selected for the dinner table, it retains its
Speaker 2: novel qualities as well as some of its supernatural and
Speaker 2: symbolic qualities. So you know, I guess, you know, on
Speaker 2: the medieval European table and you know into Renaissance times,
Speaker 2: it's like you can have it both ways. The animal
Speaker 2: can be I guess, both symbolic and delicious.
Speaker 3: So like if unicorns actually existed, you could take on
Speaker 3: some of the symbolic I don't know, purity and holiness
Speaker 3: of the unicorn by eating its flesh. Maybe.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they would totally have spit roasted a unicorn. Now,
Speaker 2: some select groups in India also historically ate the bird,
Speaker 2: and we also have accounts that the ancient Romans enjoyed
Speaker 2: peacock meat as well as the ostrich and various other
Speaker 2: items in a Roman work titled on the subject of cooking,
Speaker 2: a work that is attributed to a Roman by the
Speaker 2: name of Apicius, though apparently there are two different Apiciuses
Speaker 2: in the historical record that historians think this might have been.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure if we know where any degree
Speaker 2: of accuracy, like who this was that wrote this, But
Speaker 2: on the subject of cooking, this is in translation. Of course,
Speaker 2: it is stated entrees of peacock occupied the first drink,
Speaker 2: provided they be dressed in such manner that the hard
Speaker 2: and tough parts be tender. The second place in the
Speaker 2: estimation of gourmet have dishes made of rabbit, third spiny lobster,
Speaker 2: fourth comes chicken, and fifth young pig.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So according to this source, peacock is right at the
Speaker 2: top if you cook it right, and you know modern
Speaker 2: American mainstays of chicken and pig like, that's that's just
Speaker 2: down the list. That's after your rabbit and your spiny lobster.
Speaker 3: Wait, beef doesn't even make the list. No love for fish?
Speaker 3: Where's my goat?
Speaker 2: Whoever Apicius was? The delicacies based on peacock tongues are
Speaker 2: also attributed to him, But I wonder if even the
Speaker 2: Romans ever considered such a tutor dish, As listed by
Speaker 2: Breverton in his book as redressed peacocks which seem alive
Speaker 2: and how to make them breathe fire through their mouth.
Speaker 2: This is one of the listings from Tutor England that
Speaker 2: he goes over it. So basically this is a This
Speaker 2: is very similar to the peacock I'm assuming here it
Speaker 2: amounts though to a complex First of all, you know
Speaker 2: butchering and then you know spit roasting of said bird.
Speaker 2: But then it's stuffed and mounted, and its skin and
Speaker 2: its feathers are added back. And then on top of
Speaker 2: everything else, they use some sort of of a fire
Speaker 2: effect created via camphor, a waxy, colorless substance that burns
Speaker 2: at a low temperature so like some sort of little
Speaker 2: pyrotechnic device inside the peacock's mouth so that as you
Speaker 2: serve it, it is breathing fire.
Speaker 3: Were peacocks thought to breathe fire in life? Or I
Speaker 3: wonder what this is connecting to.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it's just it's kind of like
Speaker 2: lighting the candles on a birthday cake, right, or you know,
Speaker 2: a flaming drink. You know, a little fire makes it
Speaker 2: even more exciting. And so, yeah, if you're going to
Speaker 2: have an animal with its head on it, why not
Speaker 2: have that head spitting fire?
Speaker 3: Okayya blow out the peacock honey. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now this leads us to another aspect that we kind
Speaker 2: of touched on very briefly. We mentioned how the Romans said, Okay,
Speaker 2: peacock flesh is the best, but you got to dress
Speaker 2: it right, you got to cook it right so that
Speaker 2: you don't have to deal with the heart and the
Speaker 2: tough parts. You can make those parts tender. There does
Speaker 2: seem to be a lot of discussion about just how
Speaker 2: tough peacock meat can be, and this gets into this
Speaker 2: idea that you also see sort of reverberating through even
Speaker 2: ancient literature, the idea that the peacock's flesh did not rot,
Speaker 2: that it was incorruptible.
Speaker 3: This is getting more and more unicorn by the moment.
Speaker 2: It is. Really these are attributes you would expect to
Speaker 2: be applied to the unicorn or something like that, and
Speaker 2: not a peacock, which, you know, It's like, I grew
Speaker 2: up knowing people who had peacocks wandering around their homes.
Speaker 2: Like it didn't seem weird at all. It didn't seem
Speaker 2: like a magical creature, you know. I mean, it's impressive,
Speaker 2: but not magical.
Speaker 3: To be clear, this is not true. Peacock's rot when they.
Speaker 2: Die, right, right. But this idea seems to go back
Speaker 2: a ways. I've seen it attributed to Aristotle, but I
Speaker 2: don't believe he ever directly addressed it, though I think
Speaker 2: there are some later authors who then kind of like
Speaker 2: tried to tried to claim that, oh well, he was
Speaker 2: aware of this belief, and perhaps he's somehow alluding to it.
Speaker 2: Writers such as Plenty and Plutarch would have they also
Speaker 2: discussed the bird's links to traditions of immortality. But where
Speaker 2: we really find a firm example of this being discussed
Speaker 2: is in the fifth century CE book on the City
Speaker 2: of God against the Pagans, or the City of God
Speaker 2: by Augustine of Hippo. And I'm going to read for
Speaker 2: you here from the Marcus Dodds translation, for who bought God,
Speaker 2: the creator of all things, has given to the flesh
Speaker 2: of the peacock its antiseptic property. This property, when I
Speaker 2: first heard of it, seemed to me incredible. But it
Speaker 2: happened at Carthage. A bird of this kind was cooked
Speaker 2: and served up to me, and taking a suitable slice
Speaker 2: of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to be kept.
Speaker 2: And when it had been kept as many days as
Speaker 2: make any other flesh stinking, it was produced and set
Speaker 2: before me, and emitted no offensive smell. And after it
Speaker 2: had been laid by for thirty days and more, it
Speaker 2: was still in the same state, and a year after
Speaker 2: the same still, except that it was a little more
Speaker 2: shriveled and drier. Who gave to chaff such power to
Speaker 2: freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such
Speaker 2: power to warm that it ripens green fruit.
Speaker 3: I don't think I understood that last sentence.
Speaker 2: Well, he's tying it all into the power of God,
Speaker 2: the creator, the chaff and the ripening of green fruit
Speaker 2: that's not directly involved with the peacock's flesh, but.
Speaker 3: It's some context of theological observation. Wow.
Speaker 2: Right, And I have to say this may be the
Speaker 2: single most impressive leftovers inspired theological argument or example of
Speaker 2: all time, just hands down. I can't imagine that there's
Speaker 2: a better one out there where, like Augustine's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I brought some food home from dinner and it didn't
Speaker 2: rot and a year later it's still good. What can
Speaker 2: I say? Glory to the creator?
Speaker 3: Imagine if you saw that video I don't know when
Speaker 3: this was of like the McDonald's burger that wouldn't rot.
Speaker 2: Remember that, Yeah, I mean similar thing. Right, Glory be
Speaker 2: to God. But anyway, the peacock, in large part due
Speaker 2: to this discussion, but also you know, trailing off of
Speaker 2: other cultural and religious connections, it becomes a symbol of
Speaker 2: not not mere pride as you might expect from watching
Speaker 2: a peacock stroll about, but of Christian eschatology, informed as
Speaker 2: well by medieval ideas concerning their molting and and also
Speaker 2: you know, very real observations that they eat small snakes
Speaker 2: and therefore well maybe they're you know, they're killing and
Speaker 2: eating venomous serpents, and so the peacock becomes a symbol
Speaker 2: of the resurrection in early Christian art. You see it
Speaker 2: in early catacombs and so forth.
Speaker 3: And thus we shall dine upon it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. It's so interesting that you know,
Speaker 2: a bird like this, you know, you know, it's very spectacular,
Speaker 2: and it can take on all of these additional meanings
Speaker 2: and and so forth. But then also, you know, you
Speaker 2: come down to it, it's like, let's put it on
Speaker 2: the dinner table, let's make it look amazing, let's eat it.
Speaker 2: I've never eaten peacock, but I would love to hear
Speaker 2: from anyone out there who has who can testify to
Speaker 2: the corruptibility of its flesh. But also just how does
Speaker 2: it taste if prepared properly. What are your tips for
Speaker 2: cooking peacock?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if it's if it tends to be tougher than
Speaker 3: your normal poultry, like chicken or whatever. I would imagine
Speaker 3: it's one of those things they do, like, you know,
Speaker 3: a long cooking time on like maybe some kind of
Speaker 3: peacock equivalent of cocoa vaan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't even know where you go to
Speaker 2: get peacock meat, officially, because I mean it's not like
Speaker 2: you can't go to like what a fud Ruckers in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties and get a peacock burger like you
Speaker 2: could get like an Ostrich burger apparently, but at any rate.
Speaker 3: I bet they got it at Walmart. All right, Well,
Speaker 3: I wanted to come back to something I think we
Speaker 3: alluded to a little bit in terms of extravagant meals
Speaker 3: and performing meats. As you mentioned earlier, Rob, Yes, this
Speaker 3: is the subject of ingastration, which is the culinary term
Speaker 3: for stuffing one animal inside another. At this point, most
Speaker 3: of you out there listening have probably heard of the
Speaker 3: famous or infamous urduccan, a three bird or made of
Speaker 3: a duck, a chicken, and a turkey, and I've seen
Speaker 3: dispute about what order they are stuffed in. Now I
Speaker 3: was reading that it's most often a duck stuffed inside
Speaker 3: the body cavity of a chicken stuffed inside the body
Speaker 3: cavity of a turkey. But sometimes it sounds like the
Speaker 3: duck and chicken rolls are reversed and may just have
Speaker 3: to do with how large each one you've got is.
Speaker 3: But in most descriptions these birds are, they're not stuffed
Speaker 3: in whole with the bones at all. The bird carcasses
Speaker 3: are fully de boned beforehand, so you take all the
Speaker 3: bones out and just have the meat in the skin,
Speaker 3: and then there's usually also some form of stuffing to
Speaker 3: pad out the spaces in between.
Speaker 2: I had to be reminded of this, but apparently my
Speaker 2: brother in law made one of these years and years ago,
Speaker 2: and the main surviving detail of it is that he
Speaker 2: had to get up super early in the morning because
Speaker 2: he did have to remove the bones from everything.
Speaker 3: Deboning a whole poultry carcass is I have actually done
Speaker 3: it before. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Sure, if
Speaker 3: you're an experienced butcher, it's you know, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 3: But to my amateur hands it.
Speaker 2: Was a task, I bet.
Speaker 3: Though I have never made a turducan. This was just
Speaker 3: a chicken.
Speaker 2: I mean, I apparently ate of this tur duncan, but
Speaker 2: this was a long time ago and I have no
Speaker 2: memories of what it might have tasted like.
Speaker 3: So the tur ducan is something that I suspect is
Speaker 3: referenced for comedy value at least a thousand times as
Speaker 3: often as it is actually eaten, not only because for
Speaker 3: you know, many people for whom it is not a
Speaker 3: regular part of their dining fine in gastration of funny concept. Also,
Speaker 3: I suspect because the word turducan contains the word turd.
Speaker 2: That's true, It's just a funny sounding word.
Speaker 3: Yes. Famously, the American football commentator John Madden talked about
Speaker 3: the idea of a turducan on some NFL event broadcasts
Speaker 3: around Thanksgiving across the years. You know, I'm not a
Speaker 3: football fan, so I knew nothing about this. I only
Speaker 3: came across this as I was reading about it. But
Speaker 3: I looked up some of these videos and it is
Speaker 3: quite fun. He's Madden is talking about the tru duck
Speaker 3: in with an adorable combination of amusement and amazement. It's
Speaker 3: just like, get allo to this. I'm about to knock
Speaker 3: your socks off. It's a chicken inside a turkey. And
Speaker 3: I found this clip from a It's like some pre
Speaker 3: show chatter from the Eagles versus the forty nine Ers
Speaker 3: game on the Monday before Thanksgiving November two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: and Robbie, I shared this video with you so hopefully
Speaker 3: I can get your reaction to it. But this video
Speaker 3: is one of the most like Year two thousand and
Speaker 3: two things I've ever seen. So the announcer comes on
Speaker 3: and they're like Monday Night Football pre Thanksgiving, brought to
Speaker 3: you by Budweiser, Brood Fresh in America, Touchstone Pictures, the
Speaker 3: Hot Chick coming soon to theaters everywhere, and then there's
Speaker 3: also an there's an ad for Radio Shack, and then
Speaker 3: an ad for Chrystler, and the tagline for Chrysler at
Speaker 3: the time was love equals Drive. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I watched this video and I yes, this was impressive.
Speaker 2: I also am not a football fan. I know of
Speaker 2: Madden from his many video games, but yeah, he gets
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 3: Literally he made so many video games.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, prolific of time for that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, by the way, just important correction to what I
Speaker 3: just said. JJ just chimed in because he watched the video.
Speaker 3: Also to let us know that it was not love
Speaker 3: equals drive. It was drive equals love though, OK. I
Speaker 3: think by some principle of mathematics that works out to
Speaker 3: the same thing.
Speaker 2: I think, so right right, sure, it's got it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, mathematicians let us know. But also so,
Speaker 3: the funny thing about this video is that Madden is
Speaker 3: extolling the virtues of the true ducan, like he explains
Speaker 3: what it is. He's like, yeah, it's you know, you
Speaker 3: put this bird inside this bird and it's so great.
Speaker 3: But then he also demonstrates how how a turducan is
Speaker 3: structured by he brings the camera over to this prepared
Speaker 3: roasted turducan and then just rips it apart with his
Speaker 3: hands to show all the layers.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, somebody spent all day on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So who actually invented the turducan and when is
Speaker 3: a matter of some dispute. The American Cajun and Creole
Speaker 3: chef Paul Prudam at one point claimed he invented the
Speaker 3: turducan at a lodge in Wyoming at some point. This
Speaker 3: probably would have been in the nineteen sixties or maybe
Speaker 3: the early seventies, though the first time he published his
Speaker 3: recipe was in a cookbook in the eighties. And then
Speaker 3: a couple of other Louisiana based chefs named Junior and
Speaker 3: Sammy Herbert brothers who ran a butcher shop together in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: They claimed they were the first to create it. So
Speaker 3: it's as far as I can tell, still in dispute,
Speaker 3: when the first authentic turducan was conceived. But part of
Speaker 3: the problem with assigning credit for the invention of the
Speaker 3: turducan is how close does a rect have to be
Speaker 3: to count? Because if you get a little looser in
Speaker 3: your criteria and you just start looking for examples of
Speaker 3: birds stuffed inside birds and cooked, examples start to go
Speaker 3: way back hundreds or thousands of years into history. It's
Speaker 3: just the question of who specifically did this combination in
Speaker 3: this order.
Speaker 2: Well, Plus it also comes down to the question are
Speaker 2: you talking about doubles are you talking about triples?
Speaker 3: That's right, So I mentioned the idea of stunt food earlier.
Speaker 3: You know, the cockin trice clearly seems to me to
Speaker 3: be a kind of stunt food. But stuffing meats inside meats,
Speaker 3: stuffing whole animal carcasses inside other animal carcasses and then
Speaker 3: cooking them, that seems to me to be like the
Speaker 3: quintessential stunt food. Like whatever actual unique pleasures lie in
Speaker 3: the eating of three different kinds of poultry meat all
Speaker 3: layered together and then cooked, as opposed to just you know,
Speaker 3: served on their own separately. I think it's hard to
Speaker 3: deny that the primary appeal of this kind of thing
Speaker 3: is conceptual novelty, the novelty, the extravagance, the expense and
Speaker 3: the difficulty imagined, and the preparation. It's the idea that, like,
Speaker 3: you didn't have to do this, but you did it anyway.
Speaker 3: And you know, that's an interesting thing to think about
Speaker 3: in food preparation because you could represent that that appeal
Speaker 3: in more sympathetic and less sympathetic ways. So in our
Speaker 3: cultural context, a more sympathetic view would be that it's
Speaker 3: like an expression of creativity by a cook, a desire
Speaker 3: for a challenge, a desire to delight diners and your
Speaker 3: guests by giving them something new, like you may have
Speaker 3: had poultry before, but not like this. And then a
Speaker 3: less sympathetic view in our cultural context is that it's
Speaker 3: about like showing off. You're showing off your skill if
Speaker 3: you yourself or the cook, or maybe if you know
Speaker 3: you're hiring the cook or buying this thing. It's about
Speaker 3: showing off your power and wealth. So I want to
Speaker 3: keep that in mind while we turn into one of
Speaker 3: the most interesting antique accounts of in gastration that I
Speaker 3: came across, and this is a story that was in
Speaker 3: a book I found about the Evolution of the human
Speaker 3: diet by a University of Edinburgh biologist name Jonathan Silvertown.
Speaker 3: So the book is called Dinner with Darwin, Food, Drink
Speaker 3: and Evolution, published by the University of Chicago Press in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. And so Silvertown tells the story of this
Speaker 3: particular in gastration project as follows. So the year is
Speaker 3: sixty three BCE. This would have been during the Roman
Speaker 3: Republican period. And in sixty three BCE there was a
Speaker 3: banquet held in honor of the Roman statesman Cicero, who
Speaker 3: is still known today for being a great orator and rhetorician,
Speaker 3: you know, great giver of speeches. But he wasn't just
Speaker 3: a you know, it wasn't just style points for Cicero.
Speaker 3: He was also a very important power player in Roman
Speaker 3: politics at the time. The host of this banquet for
Speaker 3: was one of the richest citizens of Rome, a consule
Speaker 3: named Servilius Rullus. And allegedly, you know, it starts off
Speaker 3: with some appetizers, early courses of the feast that went
Speaker 3: over extremely well. The guests were very happy and in
Speaker 3: fact they burst into applause after the appetizer courses. But
Speaker 3: the real centerpiece of the feast would be the porcus troyanis,
Speaker 3: or what French authors would later call the bore a
Speaker 3: la troyenne the trojan pig. Now why would it be
Speaker 3: called that? Your mind might already be jumping to the answer.
Speaker 3: But if you stick with me for a second, the
Speaker 3: description goes that this dish is brought out on a
Speaker 3: giant silver plate that takes four slaves to carry. The
Speaker 3: plate is The plate is huge, and on it there
Speaker 3: is a roasted bore with baskets of dates hanging from
Speaker 3: its tusks, which are still attached. And then it's surrounded
Speaker 3: by delicate little pastries made to look like a brood
Speaker 3: of little piglets.
Speaker 2: Whoa, it's already getting outrageous, and we haven't gotten inside
Speaker 2: the pig.
Speaker 3: I haven't even gone in yet. Yeah. Then they cut
Speaker 3: open the roast bore to reveal that inside it there
Speaker 3: is a second roast bore, and then inside the second
Speaker 3: roast bore a third, and so on and so on,
Speaker 3: giving way to smaller and smaller animals until the final core.
Speaker 3: You reach the core, you know, the center of the
Speaker 3: death star. What's down there? It's a tiny little cooked bird.
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 3: Now I enjoy cooking a challenging dish. But also this
Speaker 3: is true for a lot of the dishes we've talked
Speaker 3: about today, But for some reason, in this particular example,
Speaker 3: I was just filled with horror imagining this dish made
Speaker 3: by people who were not aware of germ theory and
Speaker 3: did not have like time temperature charts for pasteurization. I'm
Speaker 3: just feeling like that that bird in the middle was
Speaker 3: not cooked properly. Yeah, or if it was, everything else
Speaker 3: was dry as heck. But anyway, so this is how
Speaker 3: you get the name Trojan pitch. As one Roman author
Speaker 3: tells us, it was stuffed with smaller animals in the
Speaker 3: same way that the Trojan horse of the Iliad was
Speaker 3: filled with armed soldiers. And I also like the implication
Speaker 3: that it will launch a sneak attack on your body
Speaker 3: from the inside.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, it sounds like it just might.
Speaker 3: By the way. So this is the way that Silvertown
Speaker 3: tells the story in the book, but elsewhere I've seen
Speaker 3: alternate accounts. Apparently there are multiple ancient texts that mention
Speaker 3: versions of this dish, and alternate accounts of the Trojan
Speaker 3: pig describe it as a roast bore stuffed with cased sausages,
Speaker 3: which were said when you cut open the boar, to
Speaker 3: spill out of the hog like intestines. Delicious.
Speaker 2: Okay, maybe it's more amusing if you're like closer to
Speaker 2: your butchery culture.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah, possibly so. In this book, the author
Speaker 3: frames this within a discussion about the shifting pressures dictating
Speaker 3: how we prepare food when our relationship to food resources changes.
Speaker 3: You know, of course, with wild animals and for most humans.
Speaker 3: For most of the history of our species, the primary
Speaker 3: concern with food has just been making sure you have
Speaker 3: enough access to the nutrients you need to survive. But
Speaker 3: once humans get into a situation where there is what
Speaker 3: feels like a dependable surplus of food, our attitude about
Speaker 3: what food is for changes. It becomes less about meeting
Speaker 3: the metabolic energy needs of the body, and food can
Speaker 3: be used for other things to achieve other important goals,
Speaker 3: such as trying to boost social status. And I think
Speaker 3: there's no doubt at all that in like most cultures
Speaker 3: throughout history, there has been a social status benefit to
Speaker 3: being a good host. That's like a I don't know
Speaker 3: if I can say it's a cultural universal, but it's
Speaker 3: got to be close to universal. Like being a good
Speaker 3: host is widely recognized as a thing that makes you
Speaker 3: a socially respectable person. And one of the ways you
Speaker 3: can approach trying to gain a reputation as a good
Speaker 3: host is by serving elaborate and impressive and delightful meals,
Speaker 3: not only meeting your guest's energy needs, but beyond that
Speaker 3: giving them goostatory pleasure, and then beyond that giving them
Speaker 3: novelty in food, and then beyond that giving them excess
Speaker 3: just for excess's sake, just to show them that you
Speaker 3: can and you're willing to. So there's an interesting relationship
Speaker 3: here that Silvertown points out as sort of a difference
Speaker 3: between satisfying hunger and satisfying the need for status, because
Speaker 3: hunger is fundamentally hunger is both limited by some kind
Speaker 3: of physical constraints on the body, but it's also insatiable
Speaker 3: in the long term. So you can eat a meal,
Speaker 3: but you can only eat so much until you're full.
Speaker 3: Even if you've got a big appetite, you know there's
Speaker 3: going to be a limit. And then also on the
Speaker 3: other end, eventually, no matter how much you eat, your
Speaker 3: safe will trend down towards zero over time, so at
Speaker 3: some point, even if you had a really big meal,
Speaker 3: you're going to need to eat again. You meet the need,
Speaker 3: and then overtime the need recurs. Pressure for social status,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, can be subject to a positive
Speaker 3: feedback loop. A silvertown rights quote. My three bird roast
Speaker 3: raises my status among my dinner guests, who then feel
Speaker 3: the need to reciprocate. When everybody is serving three bird roasts,
Speaker 3: I have become like everyone else. So I go one
Speaker 3: better and show off with a four bird roast. Four
Speaker 3: bird roasts become the new norm, and so I have
Speaker 3: to go one better. And you know, I was thinking
Speaker 3: about this and thinking that they are actually different and
Speaker 3: more familiar ways this can be acted out and socially understood.
Speaker 3: So we are not all like Roman consuls or tutor
Speaker 3: British aristocrats jockeying for political power. But the desire for
Speaker 3: status can manifest to us in ways that seem more
Speaker 3: benign in our cultural environment. So here's an example I'm
Speaker 3: thinking of. You want to host a family Thanksgiving maybe,
Speaker 3: and you want to make sure that the spread is
Speaker 3: really nice, so that the people in your family and
Speaker 3: your friend group who are attending, will like you, and
Speaker 3: will have a good time, and will enjoy coming to
Speaker 3: your house at the holidays, and we'll want to spend
Speaker 3: time with you. That that is perfectly reasonable thing to want,
Speaker 3: And it feels a lot less crass and cutthroat than
Speaker 3: the historical examples you know of these, like Roman politicians.
Speaker 3: But I think it's fair to say that this is
Speaker 3: still a way of using food to boost our social status.
Speaker 2: I think I think that's a good point. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's like we are social animals, like we cannot help
Speaker 2: but engage in those currents, whether it is about the
Speaker 2: grander game of you know, thrones in politics, or if
Speaker 2: it is about a much simpler and maybe more wholesome
Speaker 2: game of just appealing to friends in love with.
Speaker 3: Right, wanting to be liked and accepted by your social circle,
Speaker 3: by your friends and family. Now to cite a I
Speaker 3: don't want to judge too much, but a potentially fine
Speaker 3: or potentially less wholesome feeling example from today. Another variation
Speaker 3: is not actually physically hosting guests in person, but like
Speaker 3: posting your impressive food creations on social media. In that format,
Speaker 3: you don't actually have to go to the trouble of
Speaker 3: hosting people, but you can still presumably impress others and
Speaker 3: gain social status by digitally showing off your turducan or
Speaker 3: whatever other impressive food creation on the gram.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it is one of those things that
Speaker 2: I guess is kind of like doubly impressive because not
Speaker 2: only does it mean you can cook said dish, but
Speaker 2: you also have the talent and skill to properly photograph
Speaker 2: or film it. Those two skills don't always go hand
Speaker 2: in hand.
Speaker 3: Oh they don't. Yeah, yeah, I know. Food photography is
Speaker 3: a real It's a thing people don't appreciate enough because
Speaker 3: they consume like food food photography all the time, and
Speaker 3: like don't realize how disgusting even a lot of really
Speaker 3: good food looks if you know, the light conditions aren't
Speaker 3: right and so forth. Yeah, but anyway, coming back to
Speaker 3: the argument from this book, According to this author Silvertown,
Speaker 3: this is why in a food surplus environment, where our
Speaker 3: investments in food become more about promoting social status than
Speaker 3: about simply satisfying the body's energy needs, there can be
Speaker 3: a tendency to always try to go one better, to
Speaker 3: keep one upping the social expectations because the need for status,
Speaker 3: can have this this zero point adjusted to whatever your
Speaker 3: cultural baseline is, which might feel to you like it
Speaker 3: involves cramming seven chickens inside nine pigs for Thanksgiving or whatever.
Speaker 3: But like you were saying, rob, it cuts to a
Speaker 3: core biological reality about humans, which is that we are
Speaker 3: not sharks. You know, we are a deeply social species,
Speaker 3: and social reputation is nearly as important to us as food.
Speaker 3: It's like barely under food in terms of needs. It's
Speaker 3: core to our wealth being. And so the desire to
Speaker 3: have a good reputation, to be liked by friends and family,
Speaker 3: to do and to have, you know, to have positive
Speaker 3: social status, that that is something that it cuts really
Speaker 3: deep to the human experience. It's a strong need we have.
Speaker 3: And if you get in a cultural situation where you
Speaker 3: feel like in order to meet those needs, to meet
Speaker 3: that pressure for for reputation and to be liked and
Speaker 3: thought of as a good host and all that that
Speaker 3: you need to do increasingly impressive and possibly even strange
Speaker 3: creations of food. That's you know, it can seem perfectly logical.
Speaker 3: It's just like this is what I've got to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's I mean, this is the reason
Speaker 2: why we have, you know, religious and mythological tales in
Speaker 2: which it is it is stressed that you were you
Speaker 2: were always good as a host because the people you
Speaker 2: are entertaining they may seem like nobody, but they could
Speaker 2: be gods in disguise, you know. Like that's how that's
Speaker 2: how essential hosting is to the human experience. Yeah, now
Speaker 2: I want to sort of close things out in maybe
Speaker 2: a less cerebral area. I want to talk very briefly
Speaker 2: about tofurky, because tofurkey is also, I mean, I think objectively,
Speaker 2: a funny word. It makes me laugh anytime I see
Speaker 2: a package of tofurkey at the store, and that alone
Speaker 2: makes me want to buy it.
Speaker 3: Can I do a ranking of words? Yeah, they said,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say the least funny word is chicken. Turkey
Speaker 3: is a funnier word than chicken. Tofurkey is a funnier
Speaker 3: word than turkey, and turduck in is a funnier word
Speaker 3: than tofurkey.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that ranking is solid, But if you're
Speaker 2: not familiar with tofurke, it is a holiday meat substitute,
Speaker 2: really a feast meat substitute in a limited way. It's
Speaker 2: a blend of wheat protein and tofu. According to the
Speaker 2: website of the official Tofurky product, like the company anyway,
Speaker 2: began in nineteen eighty when a teacher and naturalists by
Speaker 2: the name of Seth Tibbott made some from scratch Tempe
Speaker 2: to share it with friends in Portland, and then like
Speaker 2: the company takes off and he eventually gives the world
Speaker 2: Tofurkey in nineteen ninety five as a vegan holiday roast,
Speaker 2: which I mean, you know, the mid nineties, Like that's
Speaker 2: as you for a lot of people, like that's early
Speaker 2: in vegan cooking. You know, that's a time period where
Speaker 2: I feel like it's more likely to be to be
Speaker 2: the punchline on a late night joke. But I guess
Speaker 2: that's also the beauty of the word tofurky. It is
Speaker 2: just innately funny and is therefore going to wind up
Speaker 2: the subject of late night jokes. But essentially what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here is, yeah, a vegan meat substitute loaf
Speaker 2: filled with stuffing. So you know, it does connect to
Speaker 2: these various traditions of big roasts and stuffed meats, but
Speaker 2: with this meat free twist, I still prefer feet of meat.
Speaker 2: But still I admire the Toferki, and it makes me think,
Speaker 2: like what additional twists on these traditions we might see
Speaker 2: in the near future, even either with our already robust
Speaker 2: imitation meat capabilities, which really have come a long way
Speaker 2: since the mid nineties. Some phenomenal meat substitutes out there.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of several of them. But then
Speaker 2: also we have the ever potential future of that grown meat.
Speaker 2: I always hear conflicting things about how far that, how
Speaker 2: far off that is in terms of feasibility, but maybe
Speaker 2: not so far off in terms of just pure meat spectacle.
Speaker 2: You know, like you could imagine that grown whatever being
Speaker 2: like the extravagant centerpiece, because it's like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: not at the point yet, you know where it can
Speaker 2: be rolled out to everyone.
Speaker 3: My god, though, I mean the create like if you're
Speaker 3: impressed by cramming together some crab legs and a turkey
Speaker 3: to look like a face hug, or imagine what could
Speaker 3: be done if you can actually like grow the meat
Speaker 3: to a specified mold. You could make all kinds of things,
Speaker 3: and that could also be an interesting uh yeah, like ah,
Speaker 3: an extravagant kind of you know, it's probably not cheap
Speaker 3: to do that, But if you really want to impress
Speaker 3: your guests, it's like, here, you're you're going to eat
Speaker 3: a I don't know, a delicious unicorn head.
Speaker 2: I mean, what do meats end up tasting like when
Speaker 2: they are still on some level biologically meat, but they're
Speaker 2: divorced from the concept of living animals and they are
Speaker 2: subject to human tinkering and engineering, Like you know, what
Speaker 2: strange new tastes and forms are possible? I mean, I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess we're pointing out that to certainly, to a
Speaker 2: large extent, humans have already manipulated the taste and form
Speaker 2: of various meats and their they're domesticated meat animals. But
Speaker 2: you know, this would just take it to the next
Speaker 2: level potentially, mm hmm. It depends, I guess, to what
Speaker 2: extent you feel like you have to stay in line
Speaker 2: with the traditions and to what extent you can stray
Speaker 2: away from them. But who knows. There could come a
Speaker 2: time when on the same table you could serve both
Speaker 2: cock and trice and cock a trice right there next
Speaker 2: to each other on on silver platters.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, hey, folks out there, if you're listening and
Speaker 3: you work in the in the lab, grown meatfield right
Speaker 3: in and let us know, like, how feasible is this?
Speaker 3: Could you grow a cockatrice to eat?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the rest of you out there are pro chefs,
Speaker 2: amateur chefs, et cetera. Right in with your your thoughts
Speaker 2: and experiences with any of the recipes we've discussed in
Speaker 2: this episode. We'd love to hear from you. Send your
Speaker 2: food pictures as well.
Speaker 3: We'll have a look up, especially if they look disgusting
Speaker 3: because of the lighting.
Speaker 2: We will not judge you on that count. All right,
Speaker 2: We're gonna ahead and close out this episode, but we'll
Speaker 2: just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to send
Speaker 3: us your interesting holiday creations, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hi, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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