A Mathematician Takes on the Turducken

The turducken, which is a chicken baked inside a duck, which is baked inside a turkey, is only one of many expressions of humanity’s desire to cook foods within other foods. The Inuit once prepared birds inside a walrus carcass. The Bedouin used to cook chickens and a sheep inside a roasted camel. The Americans, back in the before times, would cook five pies within one.

The need for foods within foods is transcultural. Jung might say that it is a call from our collective unconscious.

But that is not a scientific way to look at the phenomenon. Vi Hart, a mathematician, is a person of science and breaks down the possibilities of the turducken concept at great length. She prepares quail eggs inside hens inside ducks inside a turkey, but also considers the consequences of expanding the practice on a staggeringly complicated scale.

Content warning: math.

-via Nag on the Lake


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My family had a turducken for Christmas one year. We were not impressed. personally, I like turkeys, chickens and ducks served with crispy skin. Soggy, flabby bird skin is pretty gross, IMO. If anyone asks me about getting a turducken for a special meal I will discourage them. One bird is enough for a get together.
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