How the chicken conquered the world

The Smithsonian has the full 10,000 year history of the chicken – and it’s definitely not a dull read. The article is full of intriguing tidbits such as: “A generation of Britons is coming of age in the belief that chicken tikka masala is the national dish, and the same thing is happening in China with Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

Or there’s this sad story of how a chicken was revealed to be a fraud: “A chicken bred for the demands of American supermarket shoppers presumably has lost whatever magical powers the breed once possessed. Western aid workers discovered this in Mali during a failed attempt to replace the scrawny native birds with imported Rhode Island Reds. According to tradition, the villagers divine the future by cutting the throat of a hen and then waiting to see in which direction the dying bird falls-left or right indicates a favorable response to the diviner’s question; straight forward means “no.” But the Rhode Island Red, weighted down by its disproportionately large breast, always fell straight forward, signifying nothing meaningful except the imminence of dinner.”

Read more here to answer this question: “[Chickens] provide – along with omelets, casseroles, fricassees, McNuggets and chicken-liver pâté – an answer to the question that every 6-year-old boy, visiting a natural history museum for the first time, has asked his parents: “What did a dinosaur taste like?”

And as a reward for the correct answer, here are the results from our library of a search of online chicken recipes with the highest  “buzz.”