In a painting of Jehangir’s turkey, a glimpse of the complex history of food

The emperor Jehangir was fascinated by a turkey. In his memoir Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, he wrote: “Its head and neck and the part under the throat are every minute of a different colour. When it is in heat it is quite red – one might say it had adorned itself with coral – and after a while it becomes white in the same places, and looks like cotton.”

This is standard behaviour for a male Meleagris gallopavo, the North American turkey. The skin on its head can switch between blushing red, mottled blue and livid white because of collagen fibres interspersed with blood cells that lie just beneath the skin. As the blood vessels contract or expand according to the male turkey’s mood, they alter how light reflects off the skin, causing the colour to change.

Jehangir ordered that a painting be made of the bird “so that the amazement that arose from hearing of them might be increased”. This was made by Ustad Mansur, the leading painter at his court, and it is an extraordinary image. Partly, it is the accuracy with which the turkey is depicted, both strange and beautiful within a golden floral border. But partly, too, it is for how the image freezes a moment...

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