Multi-Bird Roast

I was watching The Daily Show, on Hulu, and John Stewart and John Hodgman were discussing President Bush and how two years ago people started calling him a lame duck. Some people in 2006 even went so far as to call Bush a double lame duck (I have no idea what this means). Since Bush was a lame duck back then, Hodgman proposes that Bush is actually now a Turducken.

A Turducken is a dish consisting of a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The thoracic cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird.

This led me to see this amazing dish...

The Rôti Sans Pareil, or "Roast without equal"the largest recorded nested bird roast is 17 birds, attributed to a royal feast in France in the early 19th century. It was a bustard (which measures 41-53 inches) stuffed with a turkey (which measures 39-49 in), a goose , a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an Ortolan Bunting and a Garden Warbler (5.11-5.5 in). The final bird is small enough that it can be stuffed with a single olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds.

If you are like me and want to recreate this dish for Christmas it probably could not be legally recreated because many of the birds listed are now protected species.