Today's subject is something I actually care about, and now so you too can look informed and watch the table talk blink in confusion over your information, this blog presents the chicken you are eating, as you have no idea as to what in this world you are even chewing on.
Chickens arrived onto the western stage from traders bringing in distinct wild type breeds which originated from southeast Asia. The modern "chicken" that you know as this no taste white meat is actually based upon a very dark meated and chicken tasting fowl from India known as the Aseel.
While the foundation for the "Indian Games" as they were bred of various games, is the Aseel, the mixing of breeds for your chickens you are eating met in the modern Cornish Rock.
The Indian Games exhibited large legs and breasts in an upright stance of a very powerful looking chicken which became the Dark Cornish Game or as you know in their white offspring the "Cornish Game Hen" in those miniature all breast things in your market freezers.
In the early to mid 1800's the Americans of Boston started breeding for a distinct American breed of the "Rock". The progenitors of this were the barred Dominique which was a large framed bird which was crossed with another Asian variety called the Java as the hen.
The resulting birds were the infamous Plymouth Rocks. The very pretty and distinct black and white barred pattern which were the standard of American fowl, next to the other typical American fowl, the Rhose Island Red.
I have always found the "Plymouth Rocks " a rather greasy bird of strong flavor, but the offspring of the Plymouth in the White Rock which were white sports of the barred chickens, started the process of the heavy dual purpose chicken with the ability to mature rather rapidly, as this is something which is lacking the Games, in they are heavy framed and slow to mature.
Not a good thing if you are feeding them as feed costs money.
So these mated hybrids of the Aseel based Indian Games, met the American hybrids of the Rocks, and the net result was a grande as the Red Delicious apple to the Russet Burbank potatoe in changing the way markets and people looked at chickens.
The Cornish Rock produced a very large, meaty, fast growing bird, that consumers soon learned to associate with the 'taste of chicken' which is a rather perfect lobster or veal non flavorful meat that Americans just love to pile spices and grease onto to give it some flavor.
These birds are interesting in they basically lose their feathers, are not broody so are like mules are not going to reproduce out of a test tube and make thin margin huge sums for market farmers who employ slave Mexicans to beat on the birds and abuse them.
It is what it is though, the reality of a chicken that feeds Americans, and no one really has a clue what kind of chicken it even is. It is a marketing marvel of easy picking and easy gutting. It is what chicken is and the work horse of the entire food industry, like the Holstein cow and the Black Baldie cow birthing the French Charlois beef.
I guess it is easier killing non distinct food compared to pretty colored fowl or even white roosters who talk to you or brooding hens with babies. All a marvel in people who really were just one person, who happened by God's Grace to cross something that turned out to change food for all time.
None of which are really the way any of the food groups really taste, but it is now what people think food tastes like.
Such interesting subjects compared to all the other mind warping which takes place in all conversation in this world.
agtG
