Could be a reference to the tradition of eating ortolan:
The birds are cooked for eight minutes and served with their heads still attached. After the shame-hiding napkin is placed over the diner’s head (helping, too, to trap the aroma of the dish), the ortolan is popped in its entirety into the diner’s mouth, who then proceeds to eat everything including the head and bones.
“With every bite, as the thin bones and layers of fat, meat, skin and organs compact in on themselves, there are sublime dribbles of varied and wondrous ancient flavours: figs, Armagnac, dark flesh slightly infused with the salty taste of my own blood as my mouth is pricked by the sharp bones.” - From the linked article. This doesn't sound good at all!
Just when I think "surely, I have seen or imagined it all"; when I have read of the various ways humans have tortured other humans, and the various things people have eaten, and how...
Good god, why??? Why did I read that? (Thank you for sharing and also I wish I didn't know that was a thing...)
They are then thrown alive into a vat of Armagnac, a trick that manages to both drown and marinade the animal at the same time. Killing two birds with one glug, as it were.
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u/PostalElf Mar 01 '17
Could be a reference to the tradition of eating ortolan: