The turkey was called "Indian chicken" by the Spanish conquerors, who thought they were still in the Indies when they discovered it in Mexico (hence the French name - a contraction of poule d'Indes). It first appeared on a French table in 1570, at the marriage feast of Charles IX, but it was not commonly used in cooking until about 1630. In England it eventually replaced the Christmas goose. The turket still lives in the wild in North America and Mexico but it was already domesticated in Mexico at the time of the Aztecs; prepared with a sauce containing chocolate, it constitutes the national dish (mole poblano de guajolote). In the United States turkey is the traditional dish on Thanksgiving Day, since the arrival of the first colonists who were saved from famine by the wild turkey. It is stuffed with corn bread, roasted and served with chestnuts and orange and cranberry sauce.

Brillat-Savarin, who proclaimed himself a "dindonophile" (turkey lover), dedicated a long paragraph in The Sixth Meditation to the "Idian chicken": "The turkey appear in Europe towards the end of the 17th century; it was imported by the Jesuits, who raised a large number of them, particularly in a farm they owned near Bourges; it was from there that they gradually spread over the whole of France. This is why the colloquial name for the turkey is still jésuite in many places."

How to buy and prepare a turkey A good turkey should be young, plump and short necked, with a supple windpipe. If the bird is old, its feet are reddish and scaly. The sinews must be drawn from the legs (it is best to ask a butcher to do this). The bird may be easier to carve if the wishbone is frst removed. Usually, the entire breast is barded so that the flest is protected from drying out during cooking.