Does anybody know the name of the dish that I think was a celebration dish in England a few hundred years ago that was made by using a small bird like a quail, putting it into a pigeon or similar and graduating your birds up in size to end with a swan (i think). I would like to try something like that for Christmas this year to be a little different (don't think i'd get away with the swan though!) but I'm not quite sure what it was called or exactly how it was done. I would be extremely grateful if anybody could help me. Thought this was a good place to start. Congratulations on a great show. Thanks very much.

You could probably find what you are looking for if you search for turducken, I believe that is the USA term for the dish. I made miniature version of it before last Chirstmas, just for the hell of it. I boned a large chicken leaving in the drumsticks and end wing bones. Stuffed it with more chicken breast, a couple of duck breasts, some commercial farce (live in France so can get some excellent stuff) and sage and onion stuffing. You could substitute good quality sausage meat for the farce.

I recommend you cook on a slightly lower heat (I did mine at 160C) and used a meat thermometer. It is very dense and took (if I remember correctly) about 3 hours to cook, it may have been longer.

I have the recipe of an American friend (old family tradition) on my website. It is a very long recipe and the cooking time using a turkey, chicken and duck is 12-13 hours. Hope that helps[]

Thanks Sylv, I'll have a look for that. Still racking my brains for the name of the English version if anybody out there can help!

Sorry for such a late response on this subject but I just saw your message when I was doing a site search for quail (as I have just bought some for dinner tonight!): I had this a few years ago, my very nice butcher did all the work for me. I made up some apricoty forcemeat stuffing which he put into a boned pheasant, this went into a duck I think, then this into a boned capon (I'm not mad on turkey but that would probably be first choice as a good size). I cooked it in a roasting bag, he advised cooking it long and slow because of the density as Sylv says - I think mine was in for at least 4 hours but as I have an Aga it is a bit different anyway. I am sure if you ask a traditional butcher they will do it for you given some notice. The great thing about it was it was full of flavour and very impressive yet simple to carve as no bones. The only thing I would have changed is he left the skins on the "inner" birds and I would have taken them off as of course they didn't crisp up or anything and there is nothing worse than floppy skin!

I have always been told that this is a galantine, I have one every year at Christmas. My butcher does it for me, he starts off with 2 lemons (punctured with a fork a few times) he wraps a de-boned chicken around the lemons then stuffs this into a de-boned turkey. I usually end up with about 5kg of pure meat which takes about 4 hours to roast. I now live in a small mountain village in southern Spain, Mijas Pueblo, and because my Spanish is appalling I had great fun and a large audience when I tried to explain to my new Spanish butcher exactly what I wanted, luckily a dictionary and numerous hand gestures got me what I wanted.
Sue Bowen - Spain

I did a search for Turducken, as Sylv said, which is a chicken in a duck in a turkey, I also came across the word ballotine but I still don't think this is what you are looking for Vicki.

But I did find a recipe for a whole stuffed camel.

[link]

The recipe for camel stuffed with numerous animals used to be in Larousse. It was in the one my grandmother had (a 1950s one), and when I was little, I used to read it everytime we went to their house because there was a wonderful picture of it. Sadly, it isn't in the current edition (which was a great disappointment to me!)

Good Grief!! I'm glad I'm veggie!!!

Epicurious say that Harrods sell a version using a Pheasant in a Chicken in a Goose and call it The Royal Roast.