Turducken: the origins of the multi-bird roast

What these dishes have in common – besides all being examples of engastration, the practice of stuffing and cooking one animal inside another – is that they’re feast dishes. They’re expensive – anything from £80 to almost £200 depending on the birds’ size and number – and incredibly time consuming, taking at least forty-five minutes simply to debone and assemble. Perhaps that explains their recent return to popularity: as public interest in food, cooking and mammoth creations like those on Bake Off and MasterChef increases, the art of stuffing a chicken into a duck into a turkey or goose has taken on the aura of an ultimate feat.A proper turducken cannot be mass-produced; those seeking to buy a one ‘ready made’ will need to seek out a high-quality and highly skilled butchers, whose carcasses invariably come from organic, free-range sources. Those looking to make one themselves will need eight hours and a finger or two to spare (deboning injuries are not uncommon) along with a detailed recipe.

For butchers and farmers the three, four, ten or fifteen bird roast is a way of adding value to their stock – something Claire Symington of Seldom Seen Farm found in the early 1990s. She’s been credited with reviving the dish in Britain, together with television chefs like Antony Worrall Thompson and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who famously cooked a ten bird roast for his River Cottage Medieval Christmas Banquet. For the dinner host, they are a showstopper on a scale many could only dream of, whilst for the foodies, they provide a flavour profile to which a simple goose or turkey could never come close.