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Capon, Stuffed and Boiled
Make a forcemeat of the grated rind of half a lemon, a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley, two ounces of bread-crumbs, two ounces of butter, one and a half dozen oysters, pepper and salt. Stuff a large capon with this mixture, and boil it for two hours in a jug of water placed in a saucepan of boiling water. Beat the yolks of two eggs into half a pint of milk or cream, add six oysters, and warm without boiling. Pour over the fowl, and serve. Probable cost, 6s. 6d.
A Victorian bain-marie roast in disguise: the bird never touches the water, but steams gently inside a covered jug for two hours. The method still works, though a few of the assumptions behind it have shifted.
- The jug is the whole techniqueThe stuffed bird goes into a jug with water in it, the jug stands in a pan of boiling water topped up as it evaporates, and the contents cook at just under 100C rather than at a rolling boil. A deep heatproof pot or a large jar in a stockpot does the same job; keep water from splashing into the jug. The liquor left in the jug is worth adding to the sauce, though with the water the recipe calls for it will need reducing first.
- CaponA castrated cockerel, fattened to 6-8 lb and much richer than an ordinary fowl. Surgical caponisation is banned in the UK, though capons are still raised and sold in France, Spain and Italy. A 4-5 lb free-range chicken is the sensible substitute; a small poulard or a larger roasting bird will need proportionally more time.
- Two hours, verifiedTwo hours suits a genuine capon. For a 4-5 lb chicken start checking at 90 minutes, and go by a thermometer rather than the clock: 74C/165F in the thickest part of the thigh, and the same in the centre of the stuffing, which is the slowest point because it is dense, buttered and full of shellfish.
- One and a half dozen oystersEighteen shucked oysters, drained, for the forcemeat, plus six more for the sauce. Small native oysters were the common English oyster of the period and are the likely intention; with large modern Pacific oysters use ten to twelve, roughly chopped, and hold back their liquor for the sauce rather than letting it waterlog the crumbs.
- Bread-crumbs and butterTwo ounces each, about a cup of fresh soft crumbs and 55 g of butter. Dry packaged crumbs will absorb far more moisture and set hard; tear up stale white bread instead. A dessert-spoonful of parsley is roughly two teaspoons chopped.
- Warm without boilingThe sauce is a thin custard. Two egg yolks beaten into half a pint (285 ml) of milk or cream, warmed over the gentlest heat while stirring until it coats a spoon, around 80C. Let it boil and it curdles. Add the six oysters at the end and give them a minute at most; longer and they tighten into rubber.
- SeasoningNo salt quantity is given because the oysters and their liquor carry a good deal. Season the forcemeat lightly and correct the sauce at the end.
- Yield and costA capon fed eight to ten; a 4-5 lb chicken serves four to six. The 6s 6d is the probable cost of the whole dish, quoted so a housekeeper could budget.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the household dictionary, when a middle-class cook wanted a single alphabetical volume that would tell her what a capon was, what it cost and what to do with it. Cooking in a jug set in boiling water is often said to have been a Victorian trick for keeping delicate white meat pale and moist without a roasting jack or a reliable oven, and the same principle appears in period recipes for jugged hare and jugged pigeon. The oysters are the clearest date stamp: before the drawn-out decline of the beds that set in from the 1860s, English oysters were cheap enough to be used by the dozen as a stuffing and a sauce rather than served on their own. Boiled fowl with oyster sauce was a fixture of the British table for generations, and stuffing the bird with the same shellfish simply doubles down on the pairing.