Jahangir’s Turkey-Cock
‘Larger than a peahen and smaller than a peacock’, Jahangir wrote in 1612. Geoffrey Powell describes how the bird reached England from America some decades before the Indian knew it.
As noble on the dining-table as in the farmyard, the turkey’s customary position as the focal-point for our Christmas celebrations stands unchallenged. Not a Victorian innovation, as many think, his place in our traditional winter feast was mentioned four hundred years ago by the Elizabethan agriculturist, Thomas Tusser, who recommended in his recipe for ‘Christmas husbandlie fare’:
‘Beefe, mutton and porke, shred pies of the best, pig, veale, goose and capon, and turkey well drest; Cheese, apples and nuts, ioly carols to heare as then in the countrie is counted good cheere’.
For shred, read mince pies. Only the Christmas tree seems to have been missing in the year 1573.
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