Happy Thanksgiving!
You’ve heard of the turducken, a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey? Turns out the question of who invented it does not have a clear-cut answer. Here are some names that figure prominently in the history of the turducken.
Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière
The process of cooking food inside of other food (known as engastration) has been around since the Middle Ages. In the 1800s this French gastronomist created a precursor to the turducken called the rôti sans pareil (roast without equal) using seventeen birds: bustard, chicken, duck, garden warbler, goose, guinea fowl, lapwing, lark, ortolan bunting, partridge, pheasant, plover, quail, teal, thrush, turkey and woodcock!
Junior and Sammy Hebert
Junior Hebert claims that in 1984 a customer brought a turkey, a duck, and a chicken into Hebert’s Specialty Meats, the butcher shop owned by him and his brother in Maurice, Louisiana. They then created and named the turducken.
Paul Prudhomme
Louisiana chef Paul Prudhomme claims to have created the turducken while working at a lodge in Wyoming. He then put it on the menu of his New Orleans restaurant K-Paul. Prudhomme trademarked the name Turducken in 1986 and in 1987 a recipe appeared in his book The Prudhomme Family Cookbook: Old-Time Louisiana Recipes by the Eleven Prudhomme Brothers and Sisters and Chef Paul Prudhomme.
John Madden
Football announcer John Madden was introduced to turducken at a New Orleans Saints game in 1996 and popularized it by raving about in during subsequent Thanksgiving NFL games. He was known to give away turduckens to winning players and even tore one apart with his bare hands on “Monday Night Football” in 2002.
Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in more, here’s a Thanksgiving poem, and posts about pumpkins, cranberries, and corn. Let me know if you’ve tried turducken. After reading several articles I’m eager to taste it!
Sources
- “Who invented the turducken? How John Madden popularized the dish on Thanksgiving, ‘Monday Night Football’ broadcasts” by Jacob Camenker via The Sporting News
- “Turducken: A Brief History of the Most Complicated Thanksgiving Recipe” by Emily Racette Parulski via Taste of Home
- “The history of turducken is nearly as complicated as the dish itself” via We Are Chefs
- “Who Invented the Turducken?” by Hannah Keyser via Mental Floss