Cockatrice

Ingredients:

  • 1 suckling pig (about 7 pounds)
  • 1 large roasting chicken (about 6 pounds)
  • 6 egg yolks
  • ¼ teaspoon powdered saffron
  • ½ cup all-purpose flour
  • ¼ cup white wine
  • 1 tablespoon fresh parsley leaves (very finely chopped)
  • 1 tablespoon flour

Directions

Bake the chicken and the suckling pig separately at 375° F until tender; the chicken ought to take 2 hours, the suckling pig closer to 3 hours.

Cut the chicken in half with the incision running around the body behind the wings. The forward half is thus separated from the hind parts. Similarly cleave the pig so that the "head and shoulders" are cut from the back half of the animal. With a strong butcher's thread sew the forward half of the chicken to the back half of the pig; sew the pig's "head and shoulders" to the hind half of the capon. Each is now a cockatrice.

Turn oven up to 400° F.

Lightly beat the egg yolks. Mix in the saffron and flour to make a thick fluid. Paint this on the suture lines as well as various parts of either the "face" or appendages — gold snout and gold nails were typical adornments.

Return to the oven so the gold may set and the final creatures appear resplendent.

Mix the parsley in white wine with flour until the green color well permeates the fluid. If not a bright green, add two drops of green food coloring. Paint on "feathers" or designs for final embellishing of the cockatrice.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License