Cormorant - Recipe

Will and Guy's Humour - Cormorant Recipe

As Will and Guy often muse; 'Humour is a fickle animal'.  Well here is an example of humour that catches you unexpectedly.  The Cormorant Recipe comes from a bygone era: Countryman's Cooking, by W.M.W Fowler circa 1965.

Cormorant Recipe

Having shot your cormorant, hold it well away from you as you carry it home; these birds are exceedingly verminous and the lice are said to be not entirely host-specific. Hang up by the feet with a piece of wire, soak in petrol and set on fire. This treatment both removes most of the feathers and kills the lice.

When the smoke has cleared away, take the cormorant down and cut off the beak. Send this to the local Conservancy Board who, if you are in the right area, will give you 3/6d or sometimes 5/- for it. Bury the carcase, preferably in a light sandy soil, and leave it there for a fortnight. This is said to improve the flavour by removing, in part at least, the taste of rotting fish.

Dig up and skin and draw the bird. Place in a strong salt and water solution and soak for 48 hours. Remove, dry, stuff with whole, unpeeled onions: the onion skins are supposed to bleach the meat to a small extent, so that it is very dark brown instead of being entirely black.

Simmer gently in seawater, to which two tablespoons of chloride of lime have been added, for six hours. This has a further tenderising effect. Take out of the water and allow to dry, meanwhile mixing up a stiff paste of methylated spirit and curry powder.  Spread this mixture liberally over the breast of the bird.

Finally roast in a very hot oven for three hours.  The result is unbelievable.  Throw it away. Not even a starving vulture would eat it. 

Footnote
This account is not to everyone's taste.  However, can top that Cormorant Recipe?  If so send us your story / recipe!

Charles writes in.  'There was a time when I got paid for shooting Cormorants.  Then after the war they stopped that earner.  Blow me, now they are prosecuting me for shooting the wretched bird.  This country [England] is going to the dogs.'

Addendum
You would not believe it, but just around the corner from where Will lives in Portchester is the The Cormorant pub.  But no, this bird is not on the menu!

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