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