How to Make a Cooked Bird Sing, c. 1450


(Photo: Luttrell Psalter, British Library)

The Viviender is a Fifteenth Century book written in Middle French. It contains 60 recipies as well as household tips and medical advice. One of the recipies is ideal for Thanksgiving dinner. Fill a cooked chicken with mercury, sulfur and hot air, then bind both ends. The bird will appear to sing when you loosen the bounds:

To make that Chicken Sing when it is dead and roasted, whether on the spit or in the platter. Take the neck of your chicken and bind it at one end and fill it with quicksilver and ground sulphur, filling until it is roughly half full; then bind the other end, but not too tightly. When you want it to sing, [heat] your neck or chicken. When it is quite hot, and when the mixture heats up, the air that is trying to escape will make the chicken's sound. The same can be done with a gosling, with a piglet and with any other birds. And if it doesn't cry loudly enough, tie the two ends more tightly.


Comments (6)

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Newest 5 Comments

Miss C., you've done it again! This video is hilarious! I ended up laughing and spilling Hot Cocoa all over PJs! The cat yodeling and grocery games was absolutely the best parts. :D
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Lovely vid,
but.. dont, *please* DONT feed your cat tuna!!
it has a lot of added salt, witch we humans like and can digest..
but it WILL destroy our lovely pet's kidneys in the long run...
fact; salt + cat = slow horrible DEATH
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My brother and I have done cat yodeling forever! We would each choose a cat (we had 5 at home, one of which never made any sound that we know of) and see who could get the cat to produce the strangest or loudest sound without the cat scratching us or running away.
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i am sick of the cats. every day there's a post about a video of a cat doing something stupid or there's a contest featuring the stupid lolcats.
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Great video! I like you guys, very funny! I would like to see more videos from you two! I plan to show this to many others who will enjoy as I did.
I too have cats and can relate-although not groovin on the spinning of the cats- not good for them at all, and the tuna thing although they love it, not good for them either. Other than that....A+!
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ROFL The cat yodeling was awesome, and this video was made all the more hilarious by the monotone way in which the dialogue was delivered! I hope they find a way to recharge the batteries with cats and balloons! :P
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mossel kots: i appreciate your concern with feeding cats tuna... and i understand that cats don't digest it the same way we do due to the salt content.. but is is still as harmful if fed only on occasion? i have a cat and i feed him tuna, but only when i run out of normal food and i won't be going to the grocery for a day or two. i never give him any more than maybe one can a month, but could that really do that much harm? i'm seriously concerned, though, because i love my cat and i don't want to hurt him. he never seems to have any adverse effects from the tuna, so i've never had to be suspicious of giving it to him, but if it seriously harms him, i won't do it anymore.

and on the other side, i could easily say that cat owners who smoke are slowly killing their felines, too. and owners who let their cats outside because they have that much more of a chance to get hit by a car or run away. and the food that they eat has antibiotic residues and such as allowed by the FDA. so really, we're all slowly killing our pets anyway.
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Finally, the enigma that is felines is brought to light! I never knew one could use a cat for music AND alternative forms of energy. My four cats and I have work to do!
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