Note 67 — Chapter XII

Thus greatly improving it for table. The cook who first thought of breaking the legs of birds, and dragging out the sinews, ought to be immortalized. The first person I saw practising the feat was an admirable black man-cook, in the West Indies: he was preparing turkeys for a large supper; and, to my great surprise, I saw him take up each bird, cut the skin in front of and about the middle of its legs, crack the bone across that part with a blow of the knife; then stick the sinews of the foot on a hook fixed high against the wall, seize firm hold of the thigh of the turkey, give a sudden powerful pull, and leave the lower part of the leg, with a large body of sinews, perfectly stripped of all flesh, suspended on the hook.