For more and more people in the world, Christmas would not be Christmas without a traditional roast turkey. So, how and when, did this turkey tradition begin? Christmas is renowned as a time for big family gatherings, requiring a large piece of meat to be prepared for the dinner table.
And on the great estates of the wealthy back in the 13th century, shooting was a very popular sport. Swan and peacock were hunted and presented as festive fare. It is believed that due to a decrease in availability, people began to hunt geese and pigs instead. By the 16th century it was these meats that were being served at yuletide. But the price of such meats for the average countryman was expensive.
It was at this time, in 1526, that a Yorkshireman, William Strickland, introduced turkeys to England from their native continent, Mexico. He acquired six birds from American Indian traders on his travels and sold them for two pence each in Bristol, south-west England. Henry VIII was the first English king to enjoy turkey, although it was Edward VII who made it fashionable to eat it at Christmas.
Turkey was only a quarter of the price of goose and pork and so it became increasingly popular for Christmas and the wealthy on the great estates began shooting turkey, making it a game bird. Although cheaper than goose, it was not until the mid-1900s, when refrigerators and freezers became more widely available, that turkey became generally affordable and was quickly established as the yuletide table favourite.
It is by no means clear how the turkey gained its name. One theory is that it is from its cry of "turk-turk". Another is that the 16th-century merchants trading along the seaboards of the Mediterranean were known as Turkes and probably included the birds in their merchandise and thus they became known as turkey fowls. Another is that Columbus thought the New World was connected to India and that turkeys were really peacocks, therefore he named them tuka which means peacock in the Tamil language of India. In Spain, the turkey was often referred to as Indian fowl, an allusion which is repeated in the French "dindon" formed from "d'Inde" which means "from India". One thing is certain, turkeys did not originate from Turkey.
Two out of every three whole birds sold last year were frozen although the shift towards the more expensive fresh turkeys is evident. The average weight of a Christmas turkey is 5.5 kilograms and is a long way from the 39.09 kilograms of the heaviest turkey featured in the Guinness Book of Records following a competition held in London in 1989.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the company founded by Bernard Matthews that, in just 10 years, gained the record of being the biggest, most successful turkey farm in Europe. Matthews started the business by buying a second-hand incubator and 20 turkey eggs, 12 of which hatched into chicks.
In two years he was producing 3,000 eggs and his garden in East Anglia soon became overcrowded with birds. He bought Great Witchingham Hall, a country mansion with 80 rooms, 16 kilometres outside Norwich, eastern England, and where initially he and his wife occupied one room and the turkeys had the run of the other 79. The hall is still the head office of the company whose turnover is now 340 million pounds sterling.
Freitag, 22. Dezember 2000