The traditional way French gourmands eat ortolans is to cover their heads and face with a large napkin or towel while consuming the bird. The purpose of the towel is debated. Some claim it is to retain the maximum aroma with the flavour as they consume the entire bird at once, others have stated “Tradition dictates that this is to shield – from God’s eyes – the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act”, and others have suggested the towel simply hides the consumers spitting out bones.
Hide your sins from God with this one weird trick!
In Swabia, in southern Germany, there is a dish called Maultaschen, meat filled dumplings, which are also called Herrgottsbescheißerle (“Lord God Cheaters”), as the meat is wrapped in dough to be invisible to god.
Was that to get around the no meat on Fridays rule? Could have just eaten an otter (it lives in water, so it must be a fish).
Yes, in the past there were a lot of days were it was forbidden to eat meat, not only on Fridays and during the 40 days before Easter.
Also beaver and turtle counted as fish.
Bescheißerle - shitters? That’s great.
Yes, jemanden bescheißen would literally translate “to shit onto somebody”, but it usually means jemanden betrügen i.e. “to cheat/betray somebody”, so Bescheißerle literally would translate to “shitters” but mean “cheaters”.
Cheating the rules imposed by the church somehow has tradition, e.g. a Pharisäer (Pharisees) is a coffe with rum and whipped cream, similarly to an Irish Coffee.
Trivia: This makes an appearance on an episode of Succession, right down to the towel covering practice. That’s how I found out about it to begin with.
I saw it first as a gag Roger did on American Dad and was then surprised to learn it was real when I saw later on Succession.
Billions has an ortolan scene also.
Where the fuck do chefs come up with this shit!? Between this and foi gras, I’m beginning to think there’s bird torture fetishists in the culinary world.
We had this very famous tv chef in the 90s. We still have weird archive videos of her doing weird shits like trying to kill slippery eels with a rolling pin.
Well, there’s this one where she is eating an ortolan, covering herself with a napkin and pulling weird and now famous comments like « oh it’s hot », « that sound is the bones under my teeth » or « I like to suck the grease out of its butt ».
Even for us French that is something.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=SEPMuyGe7dg
What a time eh
