In the early modern period, there were complex systems of hospitality and gift giving, and food was at the center of these practices, as food was both required to be served to guests and the most common gift. For their beauty, utility, and novelty, peacocks and turkeys made excellent gifts, both dead and alive. Early modern English household accounts thus detail the difficulties of raising turkeys, a practice that took off in the mid- to late-16th century.
For all the attention that peacocks received as beautiful sights, they were thought of poorly as sources of nutrition. In his dietary treatise entitled Klinikē [i.e., the art of the doctor], or The Diet of the Diseased (1633), James Hart says that while “t was esteemed a dainty dish among the antient Romans”, “[t]he Peacocke is of a very hard, solid and firme flesh, and hard of digestion, being of a hot and drie substance, ingendring grosse and melancholicke humours, and therefore need a strong stomacke,” though he qualifies that “[o]thers, again, esteeme this to be of as good a nourishment as a Turkie.”
In the Galenic humoral system, which was still common practice in the early modern period, a “hot and drie substance” was not necessarily a poor choice for all. Nevertheless, the peacock was not considered an ideal meat and so it was perhaps bound to be replaced. But most importantly, turkeys replaced peacocks because they tasted better: peacock meat was notoriously dry and tough.
