Skin the
peacock, keeping
neck and
head intact, mount it
on a
wire frame with
feathers spread, to use as a cover
for the
fowl when cooked.
Lard the
carcass with
bacon,
stuff with
turkey forcemeat,
fix it on a
spit, and roast it two hours or more before
a
brisk fire,
basting continually with
white wine. Put
the
wired skin over the bird and serve with rich
gravy
garnished with
watercress.
In France it is almost a mythological dish around which
the following legendary recipe has been built up by
ambitious gastronomes:
Pluck and clean the biggest peacock you can find and save
the giblets for the gravy. Next prepare the biggest Tom
turkey you can get, and stuff the peacock with it. Stuff
the turkey with a fine fat Strassburg goose, the goose
with a capon, the capon with a juicy pheasant, the pheas-
ant with a canvasback duck, the duck with a partridge,
the partridge with a quail, the quail with a squab, the
squab with a snipe, the snipe with an ortolan, the
ortolan with a fig-pecker, and finally fill the fig-
pecker's little tummy with one small oyster.
(by Cora, Rose and Bob Brown)