mix with honey as for other milk dishes,
add five eggs for [a pint], three for [a half-
pint]. Mix them in the milk until they
make one mass, strain into a dish from
Cuma, and cook over a slow fire. When it
is ready, sprinkle with pepper and serve.
— from Apicius, first few centuries CE
Ordinary farm stock was also improved.
Just a few decades after its arrival in the
United States from Tuscany around 1830,
descendents of the White Leghorn emerged as
the champion layers. Versions of the Cornish,
itself the offshoot of Asiatic fighting breeds,
were deemed the best meat birds; and the
Plymouth Rock and Rhode Island Red, whose
eggs are brown, were bred as dual-purpose
chickens. As interest in the show birds faded,
the egg and meat breeds became ever more
dominant. Today, an egg or meat chicken is
usually the product of four purebred
grandparents. Nearly all of the diversity
generated in the 1800s has disappeared.
barry
(Barry)
#1