I was reading recently about mock chicken... I think in the last issue of Gastronomica. The article discussed a number of mock recipies, including mock apple pie, soda cracker pie, ect. Mock Chicken is just that... meat that's not chicken, but meant to simulate chicken. Ubiquitous today, chicken was relatively rare in the pre agrobusiness world from which most mock chicken recipies date. If you were subsistence farming, you'd probably let your chickens while away their delicous youth laying eggs, too. Most commonly the meat used to simulate chicken was veal. Again, a practical concern... that calf was not only good eating, you didn't have to share the milk supply. Strange today to think that veal was once more common than chicken, but true. And as recently as many of our grandmother's lifetimes. How quickly we forget.
-P