How to Cook a Stork

From the Middle Ages down to the 17th century, European big shots liked to eat big birds--wading birds of the stork family, particularly cranes and herons.

It was a privilege of the nobility, and the 15th century cookery writer Platina was only repeating an ancient warning when he advised commoners never even to taste these birds, lest they develop a fondness for something beyond their station. But not many gourmets have tried them in recent centuries, so it’s hard to know whether they were really prized for their flavor or mostly as a status symbol.

Part of the attraction was certainly their size (on the same principle, whales were the property of the king in England). Another was all those fine feathers. In the Middle Ages, a crane or a heron was usually boiled to tenderize it and then finished by roasting, to preserve its shape; finally, to make a fine show on the banquet table, its feathered skin was rearranged around the meat. A modern health inspector would probably have a thing or two to say about that.

The ancient Romans were fond of at least one of these wading birds, the crane, which they cooked the same way as duck, sometimes by roasting but more often by braising in a spicy sweet-sour sauce. Platina knew of a Roman writer who preferred stork to crane, but he voted against stork himself because of the common Renaissance belief that storks ate snakes. (Actually, all these wading birds eat the same things--fish and frogs, mostly.)

Platina did observe that stork could be boiled, and his discussion suggests that pepper and sage would go well with it. Keep this in mind whenever you have to cook a stork.