Known for his cutting edge experiments, er, cooking at one of the world's top restaurants, The Fat Duck, chef Heston Blumenthal is not a man to shy away from a challenge. When he bought a pub, the Hinds Head, he thought he would have to leave his chemistry set in the car and cook more traditional pub fare. While some of the dishes are quite ordinary, what the diners didn't realize is that Blumenthal has a more unusual definition of "tradition" than most.

Instead of simply looking for classic favorites to serve at his pub, like fish and chips, he looked through medieval cookbooks as a jumping off place. Dishes like "quaking pudding" from the 15th century were cooked up, along with "chocolate wine" from the early 1700s. The most disturbing recipe, which seems to be what engouraged his curiosity for the old-fashioned cooking, is as follows, recounted by Blumenthal:

"I had came across a manuscript of Le Viander de Taillevent. He was the chef to the Palais Royal in Paris. I think it was the 14th century.. . .And in there was this wonderful — wonderful? fascinating as opposed to wonderful; it's not the right word — recipe for how to roast a chicken. You take the chicken, and you pluck the chicken while it's still alive, and you baste the skin with a mixture of soya, wheat germ and dripping, I think it was. And apparently this makes it look like the skin's been roasted. You then put the head of this live chicken under its tummy and rock it to sleep. Then you get two other chickens and you roast them. And you bring these three chickens out on a tray to the table. You start carving one of the roasted chickens. And. . .the one that is still alive but sleeping goes sort of 'Wha!' — head pops up — and it runs off down the table."

"And that's Part 1. Then you take this poor chicken, and you kill it, and you stuff its neck with a mixture of quicksilver, which is mercury, and sulfur, and then stitch it up. And apparently — obviously I haven't tried this at home, or at work — the expanding air in the neck cavity as you roast causes the mercury and the sulfur to react and somehow creates a clucking noise."

"And then you bring this clucking chicken back to the table. So you've taken a live chicken and made it appear dead, and then you've brought it back to life again."

Of course, Blumenthal denied that he would ever attempt the recipe, but all the same, all the reporter for the New York Times Magazine could say was "Oh my god."

Oh my god.