Roast Gryphon
History
The most exclusive and luxurious delicacy in Albion began somewhat controversially. The gryphon as a nearly sacred symbol of power is a tradition that predates every extant culture in the kingdom, being well established in the oldest surviving records of their precursors, so the thought of eating them was immediately appealing to some parts of society and scandalous to others. This controversy is now ancient history itself, and the meal of roast gryphon has firmly established its place in society as a way to honor the kingdom's gryphons, the choicest selections are always offered to its rider, a portion is taken for the royal family, and the rest can be acquired at exorbitant cost on the markets. Overwhelmingly, and especially in the case of the royal portion, the raw meat is preserved and saved for important occasions and feasts. There is a small portion of the gryphon eating populace, usually the poorer of the gryphon riders, who cannot afford to do so, and so there is often some being sold and consumed even outside of festivals, et cetera.
Execution
It's unclear whether it happens as a consequence of their magical nature or if its simply a mundane peculiarity of their meat, but every attempt to cook gryphon without an open flame has gone quite poorly. It does not become poisonous or have any significant and unexpected chemical effect, but in every instance that a different cooking method was attempted, everyone involved has agreed that the quality was dramatically lessened.
Components and tools
A gryphon's flesh is highly magical, and its feathers even more so. As such, both plucking and butchering them requires either magical or high purity silver tools. There is some insistence that this isn't entirely true and merely claimed to help maintain the monopoly of the Royal Gryphic Guild on the process, but given that they already control almost exclusive access to the only even remotely accessible portion of the gryphon population, these complaints are not often taken seriously.
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