Thursday, July 29, 2010

Percebes

El tres amigos had dinner with some folks on Tuesday night and happened to watch the BBC programme QI with Steven Fry. In the episode we watched they brought up the subject of gooseneck barnacles. Anyway, I descided to do a bit of research. Low and behold it turns out that the little crustaceans are a very popular dish in Spain and are called Precebes. They are boiled in salt water with lemon and bay leaves then served on a bed of curly lettuce. Apparently the taste is like an angel kissing on your tongue. They fetch quite the price so it's not a meal for the end of the month. But that's not all that's interesting about them. Back in the good old days folks believed these barnacles where the progeny of the barnacle goose.

Exhibit A:

You can see where they got the idea. This is before observational science progressed from “Hey, that looks like that,” to realising that birds migrate and have babies in other places. A trying to get his name in the books monk from the twelfth centuria claimed to have seen a precebes transform into a beautiful goose. Question on my mind is how did they reckon the goose “deposited” the barnacle? Other questions plague my mind. Is there a Princess Swan/Ugly Duckling parallel? Is this where we get the origin of the word “hard-ass”? I suppose we can't know everything.

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