Beard on Birds

An essential guide to cooking all things poultry from the master of American cuisine

New cover to the revised edition for the 1944 book.

James Beard’s culinary relationship with fowl has a most fascinating history. On Christmas Eve, 1942, Beard, along with eleven other air force recruits, was chosen to carve four thousand pounds of turkey overnight—an experience that put him off turkey for years.
 
When he finally returned to the nation’s favorite bird, it was with remarkable vigor and creativity. Beard on Birds reflects this passion with expertly crafted dishes that will appeal to a modern twenty-first-century palate. The definitive classic equips home cooks with the skills and techniques they need to artfully prepare chicken, turkey, duck, goose, and more. With more than two hundred recipes ranging from squab to stuffing and from quiche to quail, Beard on Birds will banish boring and bland poultry dishes forever.
 
Whether you’re cooking an intimate dinner or a Thanksgiving feast, Beard’s good humor and simple-yet-elegant recipes are sure to stand the test of time.

From the James Beard Foundation:
Fowl and Game Cookery, 1944.
Retitled in 1979 as James Beard’s Fowl & Game Bird Cookery<'b>,
and in 1989 as Beard on Birds.
Fowl and Game Cookery enumerated ways to prepare every manner of chicken, turkey, duck, squab, pigeon, goose, pheasant, quail, partridge, snipe, woodcock, and dove. We particularly like the recipe for Wild Duck in the Mud: “Choose a young duck from your catch, remove the head, slit the vent, and draw the entrails...Roll the whole thing, feathers and all, in thick, gooey (but clean-smelling) mud or clay. It should be caked on thickly to make it airtight. Place in hot coals...until the mud or clay dries out. Split the coating and remove; the feathers will come along with it. Add a little butter and salt and pepper, and eat away.” Fowl and Game Cookery caused “little stir,” according to Beard biographer Evan Jones. Nevertheless, the 1979 and 1989 editions proved Beard’s prescience, or at the least, his durability.

note about the author:
Books would be released not only as "James Beard", but also "Jim Beard" and "James A. Beard". "Jim Beard" is what his books were first published under.