Polish chickens, which are not from Poland, were bred for their elaborate plumes and crests. This pair of Gold Spangled Polish chickens was featured i

Fancy Fowl: How an Evil Sea Captain and a Beloved Queen Made the World Crave KFC

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2021-06-23 18:30:04

Polish chickens, which are not from Poland, were bred for their elaborate plumes and crests. This pair of Gold Spangled Polish chickens was featured in The Illustrated Book of Poultry by Lewis Wright, 1872.

During Queen Victoria’s long and productive reign, from 1837 to 1901, countless buildings, books, and pieces of furniture were erected, written, and manufactured. Though the monarch did not invent Queen Anne Revival style, pen Middlemarch, or decree that otherwise comfortable sofas should be crowned with unyielding rims of carved hardwood, causing untold bumps on untold numbers of unsuspecting noggins, we routinely classify this varied output as Victorian Architecture, Victorian Literature, and Victorian Furniture, respectively.

Victoria, it turns out, is actually more directly responsible for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yes, it’s sorta true! You see, the queen and her husband, Albert, devoted a great deal of their royal time and attention to the care, feeding, and breeding of chickens, which in mid-19th-century Britain were a scrawny and not especially appetizing lot. Victoria changed all that, popularizing the raising of big and beautiful chickens, many bred with birds imported from Asia. The monarch’s interest in fancy chickens ignited what was then called “hen fever,” during which the price of a pair of chickens climbed as high as $700 (the equivalent of $24,000 in 2021) before the bubble burst in 1855.

Through her fowl works, Victoria helped the world develop a taste for chicken. Victoria’s hens laid more eggs than local poultry breeds, and they were good eatin’, too. That ultimately had a direct impact on Colonel Harland Sanders, who was born in the last decade of the Victorian Era. Because a real queen had helped make chicken popular, a century or so later an honorific colonel would not need to experiment with alternative edible delivery devices for his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. In short, Queen Victoria saved the world from Kentucky Fried Opossum.