Redditors Discuss About The "Rôti Sans Pareil" Which Is 17 Birds Stuffed Inside Each Other Like Russian Nesting Dolls And It Is Delicious

The "Roast without equal" is a meal you'll love to know more about

Maryjane

• Published in Interesting
• November 25, 2022

The turducken, a thick slab of meat made by stuffing a turkey with a duck and that duck with a chicken, is often seen by the general public as the embodiment of the gluttonous fixation with meat and ridiculous intricacy that characterize modern American cuisine. L'almanach des gourmands, an 1807 cookbook by Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimond de la Reyniere, a man so eccentric he staged his own demise to see who would attend his funeral, contains the genuine monarch of culinary nonsense.

The roast without equal, as he called it, is everything that has made the once-dead art of engastration more and more well-liked today: ambitious, ostentatious, and seductively, ineluctably delicious.

His recipe calls for a bustard stuffed with turkey stuffed with goose stuffed with pheasant stuffed with chicken stuffed with a duck stuffed with guinea fowl stuffed with a teal stuffed with woodcock stuffed with partridge stuffed with plover stuffed with lapwing stuffed with quail stuffed with a thrush stuffed with lark stuffed with an ortolan bunting stuffed with garden warbler stuffed with an olive stuffed with anchovy stuffed with a single caper; with layers of Lucca chestnuts, force meat, and bread stuffing between each bird: stewed in a hermetically sealed pot in a bath of onion, cloves, carrots, chopped ham, celery, thyme, parsley, mignonette, salted pork fat, salt, pepper, coriander, garlic, and “other spices,” and slowly cooked over a fire for at least 24 hours.

More info: Reddit, vice

Redditor u/widecrusher discusses an interesting piece of information with the TodayILearned subreddit community

It involved roasting a large bird known as a Bustard which is stuffed with 17 other birds

This 15-pound bird block is about as intriguing in the historical world of engastration (stuffing animals inside other animals) and chimera (fusing animals together) cuisine as a flaccid boiled hotdog. For those who aren't keeping count, there were a total of 20 strata, 17 of which were composed of birds, and 18 creatures who had to perish.

Here are what Redditors had to say:

What this Redditor calls it

A Turducken

Definitely, a lot of names

The lobster stuffed taco

The OP had something extra to chirp in, in the comments

All of this was done for the enjoyment of some dandies at the turn of the 19th century. If it seems impossible, it's because it looks so now.

Not because it's impossible in terms of science or because there aren't enough eager cooks in the world, but rather because many of the birds are now difficult to locate and kill. For instance, the bustard is in grave danger, and it is incredibly illegal to eat ortolan bunting, a force-fed bird that is drowned in Armagnac before having its feathers torn off and eaten in one bite.

It's the second comment for me

Hopefully, the birds will be deboned

This Redditor is certainly joining in the feast

The real game changer is 17th bird

This Redditor is suggesting something for others to try

It was claimed that the rôti was based on a similarly archaic Roman recipe for a cow filled with a pig, a goose, a duck, and a chicken. But this was more than just a remnant of Roman culture.

There are stories of Bedouin cuisine that include whole dead camels that have been grilled over a charcoal pit with nuts and birds that have been filled with hard-boiled eggs and rice.

Maryjane