Gooducken

Suppliers of gooduckens say orders this Christmas are more than double those of last year, buoyed by the support of celebrities such as the actress Emma Thompson.

The must-have centrepiece this Christmas seems to be the ‘gooducken’, which is a goose stuffed with a duck that has been stuffed with a chicken.

One drawback: Unless you're an expert butcher, you will probably need to have your gooducken, goopheasen or other variant prepared for you.

Even with these enormous dishes, yet more meat lined the tables; skillets of hare with tangerine jelly, fritters of river pike, poached sturgeon with a garnish of its own caviar and even a gooducken, the extravagant portmanteau of a chicken stuffed within a duck, stuffed within a goose.

There are also variants such as (in America) the gooducken (a chicken in a duck in a goose), Waitrose’s popular four-bird roast (a guinea fowl in a duck in a turkey in a goose) and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s frankly ridiculous ten-bird roast – an 18lb turkey with a goose, a duck, a mallard, a guinea fowl, a chicken, a pheasant, a partridge, a pigeon and a woodcock inside it.

The English prepare a gooducken in which the turkey is replaced with a goose.