Guts and Glory

Of course one thing the French like to do with animals is eat them. Every bit of them. We've just spent a weekend in the Périgord, also known as the Dordogne (please don't ask me to explain what the difference is--I think the former is a historical regional name, and the latter an administrative departmental name), and it was beautiful. The kind friends who hosted us gave us a wonderful overview in a short time.

On the first evening they served a splendid meal of local delicacies, including a walnut-based aperitif, salade de gésiers, foie gras on toast, local cheeses,  and gâteau aux noix. I asked what gésiers (sometimes gisiers) were, and there was some hesitation before I got an answer. Then followed an admission that normally they waited until people had finished eating the gésiers before explaining what they are. But, never mind: gizzards. Bits of gizzard. Probably duck's, as this was Dordogne.

As one of those annoying people who is squeamish about unknown bits of meat, I was pleasantly surprised. Such a ghastly-sounding thing, but actually rather good in the eating--thin, lean, slices, almost like bacon, but with a slightly livery flavour. A few pieces went a long way, for me, but that may be because I had been told what they were....

And yet, I'm not sure. What are they? The English comes from the old French, which is from a popular Latin word thought to be gizerium or gicerium, the cooked entrails of a fowl. The Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française says it may be a borrowing from an Iranian language, but the OED makes no mention of that.

A gizzard is the second (OED) or third (DHLF) stomach of a bird, as everyone but me probably knows already--I somehow always thought it was the throat. I think I gained this impression from colourful expressions in historical novels like "I'll slit your gizzard!"

The OED gives some splendid examples of its uses beyond cookery, as for example by Samuel Pepys in his diary: "I find my wife hath something in her gizzard that which waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up." Hmmm...not surprising, given Sam' s wenching. He gave her plenty of acida.

Gizzards have been used in cooking for a long time. Here, also from the OED, is an instruction from a work called Two Cookery-bks: Take fayre garbagys of chykonys, as the hed, the fete, the lyuerys, an the gysowrys.

Well, no thanks, actually.

But we did have a wonderful time in the Dordogne, and that supper was excellent, gizzards and all.