Roast Capon
Prepare the same as Roast Chicken, allowing twelve minutes to the pound for roasting.
A one-line cross-reference of the sort common in early twentieth-century books, where the roasting chapter assumed you had already read the chicken entry. The useful work here is translating the bird and the timing.
- What a capon isA young rooster castrated to fatten it, usually sold somewhere between about 6 and 10 lb dressed, with more fat and a broader breast than a hen. True capons are still sold by some butchers and mail-order poultry farms around the holidays; failing that, a 5-7 lb roasting chicken behaves much the same, and a small turkey is closer in size.
- The temperature the original omitsThe entry gives no oven heat; the reader was expected to turn back to the chicken directions. For a modern oven, a hot start of about 425F for the first 20 minutes followed by 350F for the remainder is a reasonable equivalent.
- Twelve minutes to the poundFor a 7 lb capon that is about 85 minutes, which is in the right neighbourhood for a bird roasted at 350F after a hot start. Treat it as a planning figure only and go by a thermometer: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, not touching bone.
- StuffingIf you stuff the bird, the centre of the stuffing must also reach 165F, which usually adds 20-30 minutes and can overcook the breast. Roasting the dressing alongside in a dish is the more reliable route.
- Basting and the fatA capon carries a good deal of its own fat, so basting with the pan drippings does real work, and added butter or salt pork may not be necessary. Period recipes often dredge the bird with flour before roasting; this browns well but can scorch at the higher temperature, so add it after the initial blast if at all.
- Resting and yieldLet the bird stand 15-20 minutes before carving. A 7 lb capon serves six to eight, with a good frame for stock.
Capons were the prestige roasting bird of the American table well into the twentieth century, prized because castration produced a bird that fattened evenly, stayed tender at a larger size, and carved into generous slices — qualities that broad-breasted commercial chicken breeds are often said to have been bred to supply directly, though the line of descent is not documented. Lowney's Cook Book (1907), written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, is best remembered for its chocolate and confectionery chapters, but, as seems to have been common among household manuals of its day, it aimed to be a complete kitchen reference, hence a full meats section with terse entries that lean on one another. The twelve-minutes-to-the-pound rule belongs to a whole family of such formulas printed before home thermometers were common; cooks are generally said to have judged doneness instead by the leg joint moving freely and the juices running clear, and period roasts tended to be cooked well past what is now considered ideal.