To Souse a Turkey

Take a fat turkey and bone it and season it with pepper and salt and a good deal of mace and let it lie in that seasoning for a day or two, then draw the legs into the body tie it very tight in a cloth and boil it in salt and water then have ready your souse of salt and water with white wine vinegar, mace and pepper all boiled very well together so put your turkey into it.

—from an 18^th century Irish cookbook manuscript

Pork products tend to elbow out chicken in popularity contests. I suppose there’s only so much meat you can eat in a day. We do eat chicken, and Irish chicken is usually highly flavorful since many of our chickens are freerange. Many of the preparations are very simple, though: roasted chicken, or perhaps a chicken roasted with stuffing in it. One of the more luxurious preparations is Whiskey Chicken, which is sort of like Dublin Lawyer in its over-the-top decadence: the carved chicken waits, warm in its dish, while the pan juices are flamed with whiskey and finished with cream. Roast chicken never had it so good.