Haute Hybrids

Long before DJs, chefs around the world and throughout time have been mixing and mashing ingredients, creating entirely new (and sometimes disturbing) dishes. The Scots have their haggis, the infamous national dish consisting of sheep lungs, liver, heart, oatmeal, and onions boiled in a sheep’s stomach (and was recently put on the list of restricted foods for children in the UK). The Brits have headcheese, which is not a cheese at all, but rather a terrine of meat from the head of a calf or pig. It may also include meat from the feet and heart. The Chinese create a mishmash of boiled cow’s organs that is popularly served over noodles, sometimes mistakenly called “beef brisket noodle soup.”

But leave it to the Americans to come up with the mother of all wonders, the turducken. The definition reads like something out of the Ancient Annals of Poultry Gynecology (needless to say, that book is long out of print). Take a de-boned chicken, stuff it inside a de-boned duck, tuck that inside a de-boned turkey and glue the whole thing together with sausage cornbread stuffing. If you want to get really fancy, you can stick a baby quail inside the chicken or alternatively take the entire turducken and stuff that inside a pig.

Some recipes reverse the chicken and duck order and call it a chuckey. Some enthusiasts have taken it a bit further by taking a standard turducken and added a Cornish game hen, a quail and a pheasant to the equation and called the whole mess a turduckencorpheail.

Chef Paul Prudhomme brought popularity to the Osturduckencorheail made with a little bit of ostrich on top. The UK has adopted this strange American invention and chef High Fearnley-Whittingstall created a ten-bird extravaganza called turgoduckmaguikenantidgeonck - turkey, goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock (yes, the delicious woodcock). But the largest recorded nest of bird meat in a single dish is a17-birder known as the bustergophechideckneaealckideverwingailusharkolanine - bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan bunting and topping it off, a pied flycatcher, which is, as the final and smallest bird, stuffed with a
tiny olive.

If this is grossing you out, there’s also a vegetarian version made from tofu stuffed with tempeh and seitan known as tofucken.

Then there are also other variations of the stuffing: Oyster, Crawfish etouffee, shrimp etouffee, Cajun cornbread, dirty rice, broccoli, cheese and rice, pork boudin, and alligator stuffing.

It’s the utter absurdity that gives the turducken its appeal. But stuffing animals into other animal cavities is not new. Roman and medieval cooks did it, and not too long ago, American chef James Beard did it. The turducken is uniquely American and believed to have been birthed in Cajun country, mainly in eastern Texan and northern Louisiana.