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Here's a 500-year-old recipe from England
with a translation by James Solheim. A cockatrice was a mythical creature,
half pig and half rooster (capon). No medieval feast was complete without
a juicy roast cockatrice for the guests to eat!
| Middle English | Modern English |
|---|---|
| Take a Capoun, &
skald
hym, & draw hem clene, & smyte hem a-to in þe waste ouerþwart; take a Pigge, & skald hym, & draw hym in þe same maner, & smyte hem also in þe waste; take a nedyl & a þrede, & sewe þe fore partye of the Capoun to þe After parti of þe Pygge; & þe fore partye of þe Pigge, to þe hynder partye of þe Capoun, & þan stuffe hem as þou stuffyst a Pigge; putte hem on a spete, & Roste hym; & whan he is y-now, dore hem with olkys of Eyroun, & pouder Gyngere & Safroun, þenne wyth þe Ius of Percely with-owte; & þan serue it forth for a ryal mete. |
Take a capon [rooster],
& scald
it, & clean out the guts, & cut it in two in the waist crosswise; take a piglet, & scald it, & clean it in the same manner, & cut it also in two in the waist; take a needle & thread, & sew the front part of the capon to the rear part of the pig, & the front part of the pig to the hind part of the capon, & then stuff it as you stuff a pig; put it on a spit, & roast it, and when it is roasted enough, glaze it with yolks of eggs, powdered ginger & saffron, then with the juice of parsley on the outside, & then serve it forth for a royal food. |
Writing a book like It's Disgusting is a complicated affair. Everything
has to fit into just the right spot on a certain page—and that page has
to fit just right into the overall organization of the book. And since
It's Disgusting covers the entire world, it's very hard to narrow
the material down to one book's worth.
A book starts out as a mess of ideas, a mess of notes, and a mess of rough
drafts. During the even messier process of working with editors, the author
turns the book into a polished final product ready for the illustrator.
Occasionally, something truly wonderful has to be left out because it just
didn't fit.
So: What's more disgusting than a mouthful of boiled flamingo?
Answer: Having to remove a fascinating recipe for boiled flamingo from
your book!
Here are some of the items that had to be (horribly, appallingly, revoltingly)
REMOVED from It's Disgusting—and We Ate It!. . . .
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1. Scald the flamingo with the feathers still on.
2. Wash it and remove the feathers and other parts not meant for eating. 3. Stuff it with greens, celery leaves, etc., and tie it to keep its shape. Coat it in lard. 4. Boil the bird in a pot of water with salt, dill, and a little vinegar. 5. Put the half-cooked bird in a sauce pan and brown in oil. Add a bunch of leeks and coriander. Add a little broth. Cover and continue cooking. 6. To add color, pour in some grape juice thickened by heating. 7. Crush some spices—pepper, cumin, coriander, laser root, mint, and rue. Moisten them with vinegar. 8. Add dates and some of the juice from the sauce pan. Stir this back into the sauce and simmer. 9. Add flour and cook till thickened. Strain and pour the sauce over the bird. The recipe works just as well for parrot. |
Earls of Southampton Buried in Honey For centuries, people whispered a rumor that four English noblemen who died between 1550 and 1667 were put into coffins filled with honey. In the British tradition of the time, the coffins rested in a vault rather than in soil.
Hundreds of years later, when one of the coffins cracked slightly, a fluid oozed out. A repair worker, eager to know if the rumor was true, took a taste. Sure enough—the fluid was honey.
Blood pudding is more like a brownie
than pudding. It isn't gooey or slimy or pudding-like at all. It's spiced,
cooked hog or cow blood, mixed with flour and milk, that comes in a rectangular
box. Scandinavians take this block of hardened blood out of the box, slice
it, and fry it the way Americans fry breakfast sausage.
If you smelled its spicecake aroma while it cooked, you'd probably want
to try a bite. This straight-edged meatless meat might even turn into one
of your favorites.
Here are some weird foods in Shakespeare's plays (to go with the weird
foods on page 21 in It's Disgusting--and We Ate It!). These are
not real foods to eat, but imaginative jokes that Shakespeare put into
his plays.
| a crocodile | Hamlet, Act V, scene i |
| hay, squirrels' nuts | A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV, scene i |
| adder's heads and toads carbonadoed | The Winter's Tale, Act IV, scene iv |
| paper | Love's Labor's Lost, Act IV, scene ii |
| grass | King Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, scene x |
| husks | As You Like It, Act I, scene i |
| rocks | Troilus and Cressida, Act III, scene ii |
| tree bark | Anthony and Cleopatra, Act I, scene IV |
| Middle English | Modern English |
|---|---|
| Take faire
Garbage, chikenes hedes,
ffete, lyvers, And gysers, and wassh hem clene; caste hem into a faire potte, And caste fressh broth of Beef, pouder of Peper, Canell, Clowes, Maces, Parsely and Sauge myced small; then take brede, stepe hit in þe same brothe, Drawe hit thorgh a streynour, cast thereto, And lete boyle ynowe; caste there-to pouder ginger, vergeous, salt, And a littul Saffereon, And serve hit forthe. |
Take good
garbage (chickens' heads,
feet, livers, and gizzards, and wash them clean; cast them into a clean pot, and cast fresh broth of beef, powder of pepper, cinnamon, cloves, mace, parsley, and sage minced small; then take bread, steep it in the same broth, draw it through a strainer, cast it in, and let boil enough; throw in powdered ginger, grape juice, salt, and a little saffron, and serve it forth. |
| a meat that has
no meat in it
broods blackly on my plate— hot rectangles fried in grease that make me want to know: what boneless, cornered
beast
|
Did you guess what food this poem describes?
To find out, hold your mouse's clicker down as you run it across this box:
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James
Solheim
This page was last
updated: October
10, 1999