What is a gooducken?
This mammoth Christmas feast is a goose, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. It's an old idea, very popular with the Victorians and enjoying a revival in recent years. The principle can be carried much further –in one version, tried out on TV by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a couple of years ago, ten birds are used. Ingredients for this dish can include turkey, goose, duck, chicken, pheasant, pigeon, woodcock, lark and anything else you can catch and squeeze in.
Each bird is boned, encased in a layer of sausage meat and stuffed inside the larger bird. The sausage keeps everything moist and the combination of different poultry and/or game flavours makes an extremely rich dish. One drawback: unless you're an expert butcher, you will probably need to have your gooducken, goopheasen or other variant prepared for you. Prices for the whole thing start at about £150, so it's likely to remain a dish for very special occasions.
This mammoth Christmas feast is a goose, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. It's an old idea, very popular with the Victorians and enjoying a revival in recent years. The principle can be carried much further –in one version, tried out on TV by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a couple of years ago, ten birds are used. Ingredients for this dish can include turkey, goose, duck, chicken, pheasant, pigeon, woodcock, lark and anything else you can catch and squeeze in.
Each bird is boned, encased in a layer of sausage meat and stuffed inside the larger bird. The sausage keeps everything moist and the combination of different poultry and/or game flavours makes an extremely rich dish. One drawback: unless you're an expert butcher, you will probably need to have your gooducken, goopheasen or other variant prepared for you. Prices for the whole thing start at about £150, so it's likely to remain a dish for very special occasions.
