Category Archives: Food, Drink, and Diet

The Earliest Recipe for Turducken in the First Known Reference to “The House that Jack Built”

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The ambitious cook can substitute a platter of turducken for the traditional turkey on the groaning Thanksgiving table.   This labor-intensive dish made famous by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme consists of a boned chicken inside in a boned duck inside a boned turkey with the empty spaces crammed with figs, bread stuffing, or a sausage force meat.  The beast is roasted until glistening brown.For those of you who are wondering what on earth this has to do with the nursery rhyme “The House that Jack Built,” don’t sign off.   Many of the rhymes we consider the province of childhood are repeated by lowlifes and servants in plays, bawdy songs, and nasty political satires before the publication of the first nursery rhyme collections in the 1740s.The earliest printed appearance of “The House that Jack Built” was in John Newbery’s Nurse Truelove’s New-Year’s Gift (1750) according to Iona and Peter Opie’s Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.   But the Opies’ work is now over fifty years old and it is possible to search digital copies of 18th and 19th- century books, poems, magazines, etc. for new sightings.  Recently I ran a search for  the accumulative rhyme“The House that Jack Built” and I got a hit in a 1707 translation of the Spanish novel Estevanillo Gonzales, the Most Arch and Comical of Scoundrels.  I was sure I had hit paydirt because the “hero” was a lowlife and lowlifes speak colloquially.

In one adventures, the rascally Estevanillo  was hired as a chef on the strength of his bragging that he was the best cook in the army.  To show his chops, he directions for making for “Imperial Stuffed Meat,” an even more daunting version of turducken than Prudhomme’s.  It’s easy, he tells his audience:

It is just like the Tale the Children tell of, This is the Stick that Beat the Dog, the Dog that bit the Cat, that Jack Built; for this Egg is in the Pidgeon, the Pidgeon is to be put into a Partridge, the Partridge into a Pheasant, the Pheasant into a Pullet, the Pullet into a Capon, the Capon into a Turkey, the Turkey into a Kid, the Kid into a Sheep, the Sheep into a Calf, and the Calf into a Cow, all these Creatures are to be Pull’d, Flea’d [i.e. flayed], and Larded, except the Cow, which is to have her Hide on, and as they are thrust one into another like a Nest of Boxes.

All it needs is four hours’ roasting in a covered trench, he says, and it can be served forth. Incidentally, the 1707 recipe is rather similar to the one called the “Roti sans pareil” [ an incomparable roast] in the 1807 Almanach des gourmands, which today’s food historians cite as the earliest reference to the dish.   But curiously enough, the 1707 edition was the only one of all the reprints I found to refer to “The House that Jack Built”…  Another strange occurrence in the history of nursery rhymes…

 

Turducken on the Menu at “The House that Jack Built”: How a Rhyme and a Recipe Crossed Paths in 1707

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A platter of turducken can substitute for the traditional turkey on the groaning Thanksgiving table.   This elaborate dish made famous by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme consists of a boned chicken inside in a boned duck inside a boned turkey, the empty spaces crammed with figs, bread stuffing, or a sausage force meat and the whole roasted until glistening brown.

For those of you who are wondering what on earth this has to do with a nursery rhyme, don’t sign off yet, because I can vouch for my credentials as a rhyme finder.  Before the publication of James Orchard Halliwell’s The Nursery Rhymes of England (1840), I swear that the ditties are more likely to be found in bawdy plays, descriptions of rambles around London, and nasty political satires than anthologies for children, which are not especially numerous before 1860.   Lowlifes and servants are more likely to repeat them than ladies and gentlemen.

I made this discovery trying to verify Iona and Peter Opie’s claim in the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes that the earliest printed appearance of “The House that Jack Built” was in Nurse Truelove’s New-Year’s-Gift (1750).  Being a long accumulative rhyme, different searches using various combinations of distinctive words had to be run. Nothing new had turned up on previous attempts, but this time  a 1707 translation of the Spanish novel Estevanillo Gonzales, the Most Arch and Comical of Scoundrels, popped up and I thought it was a really promising hit. Indeed it was!

In one of his escapades, the hero was hired on the strength of his assurance that he was the best cook in the army.  Here is the passage where he gives the recipe for “Imperial Stuffed Meat,” a more elaborate version of turducken, explaining to his audience:

It is just like the Tale the Children tell of, This is the Stick that Beat the Dog, the Dog that bit the Cat, the Cat that kill’d the Mouse, the Mouse that eat the Malt, the Malt that lay in the House that Jack Built; for this Egg is in the Pidgeon, the Pidgeon is to be put into a Partridge, the Partridge into a Pheasant, the Pheasant into a Pullet, the Pullet into a Capon, the Capon into a Turkey, the Turkey into a Kid, the Kid into a Sheep, the Sheep into a Calf, and the Calf into a Cow, all these Creatures are to be Pull’d, Flea’d [i.e. flayed], and Larded, except the Cow, which is to have her Hide on, and as they are thrust one into another like a Nest of Boxes.A dish fit for an emperor’s coronation after four hours’ roasting in a covered trench, brags Estevanillo.   The 1707 recipe is rather similar to the one called the “Roti sans pareil” in the 1807 Almanach des gourmands, cited by today’s foodies as the earliest reference.  But curiously enough, the 1707 edition was the only one of all the reprints I found elsewhere to include the reference to “The House that Jack Built”…