The turkey came originally from the Americas; it is highly likely that Cortes brought it to Europe from Mexico. Introduced into France in the sixteenth century, it took some time to become popular. In 1564 Charles Estienne wrote in his L'Agriculture et la Maison Rustique "This bird is a corn bin, a bottomless pit for feed, and the only pleasure one can get from it is noise and fury in the case of the adult birds and a continual cheeping in the case of the young ones; their flesh, though tender, is tasteless and difficult to digest. That is why it must be sprinkled with spices and larded and cooked with herbs. The turkey-hens eat as much as mules." Not that this prevented cooks from making extensive use of them - so much so that in the seventeenth century King Louis XIV himself was very concerned with the breeding of turkeys at his palace in Versailles.
