Turducken
Turducken is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, further stuffed into a deboned turkey. Outside of the United States and Canada, it is known as a three bird roast. Gooducken is an English variant, replacing turkey with goose. The word "turducken" combines "turkey", "duck", and "chicken". The dish is a form of engastration, which is a recipe method in which one animal is stuffed inside the gastric passage of another; twofold in this instance. The thoracic cavity of the chicken/game hen and the rest of the gaps are stuffed, sometimes with a  highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird. The result is a fairly solid layered poultry dish, suitable for cooking by braising, roasting, grilling, or barbecuing. The turducken was popularized in America by John Madden, who evangelized about the unusual dish during NFL Thanksgiving Day games and, later, "Monday Night Football" broadcasts. On one occasion, the commentator sawed through a turducken with his bare hand, live in the booth, to demonstrate the turducken's contents. Origin. Credit for the creation of the turducken is uncertain, though it is generally agreed to  have been popularized by Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme. The most common claimant is Hebert's Specialty Meats in Maurice, Louisiana, whose owners Junior and Sammy Hebert say they created it in 1985 "when a local man brought his own birds to their shop and asked the brothers to create the medley". A New Orleans surgeon, Dr. Gerald R. LaNasa, was locally known for his use of a scalpel in deboning his three birds of choice, sometimes adding pork or veal roasts in the final hen's cavity, thus preserving the turducken tradition as a regional holiday favorite of the southern  United States. Andouille sausage and Foie Gras were always key ingredients of the LaNasa creations. The results of Dr. LaNasa's work can be found in the modern day mass-produced turducken or turduckhen (another variation adding or substituting a cornish game hen). His turkey, duck, and chicken ballotine is now widely commercially available under multiple trademark names. Dr. LaNasa's innovation and success with ballotine, Three Bird Roast and turducken began mid century, expanding in the 1960s and seventies long before many of the popular commercial Cajun/Creole chefs of today took the stage. In the United Kingdom, a  turducken is a type of ballotine called a "three-bird roast" or a "royal roast". The Pure Meat Company offered a five-bird roast (a goose, a turkey, a chicken, a pheasant, and a pigeon, stuffed with sausage), described as a modern revival of the traditional Yorkshire Christmas pie, in 1989; and a three-bird roast (a duck stuffed with chicken stuffed with a pigeon, with sage and apple stuffing) in 1990. Multi-bird roasts are widely available. "Gooducken" is a goose stuffed with a duck, which is in turn stuffed with a chicken. Historical predecessors. In his 1807 "Almanach  des Gourmands", gastronomist Grimod de La Reynière presents his "rôti sans pareil" ("roast without equal")—a bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan bunting and a garden warbler—although he states that, since similar roasts were produced by ancient Romans, the "rôti sans pareil" was not entirely novel. The final bird is very small but large enough to just hold an olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no  stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds. An early form of the recipe was "Pandora's cushion", a goose stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a quail. Another version of the dish is credited to French diplomat and gourmand Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. The 1891 newspaper article "French Legends Of The Table" offers "Quail à la Talleyrand": The book "Passion India: The Story of the Spanish Princess of Kapurthula" (p. 295) features a section that recounts a similar dish in India in the late 1800s: