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Boiled Capon
Draw a fat capon, be careful not to remove the fat from the rump; peel about one-half pound of truffles, boil them in a little Madeira; take the trimmings of the truffles and pound them with an equal amount of breadcrumbs, add half a goose's fat liver, the whites of two eggs, and a few tablespoonfuls of scarped bacon; rub through a sieve. Truss the capon with its legs forced under the skin, rub it with lemon, and tie on it thin slices of bacon fat: put it in a pan with some slices of vegetables and bacon. Place in sufficient white broth to cover, and over all a piece of buttered paper, and boil gently. When cooked drain and take off the string. Put a layer of the forcemeat on a dish, put the capon over and garnish both sides with white cocks-combs.
A grand-hotel poached bird, written for a brigade that had truffles, foie gras and a stockpot of white broth already on hand. Two things carry it: the poaching liquid never actually boils, and the forcemeat must be cooked before it reaches the plate.
- "Boil gently" means poachA rolling boil shreds the breast and clouds the broth. Hold the liquid at 175-180F, barely shivering, and the bird will stay white and moist. Figure roughly 20 minutes per pound, and pull it when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F.
- CaponA castrated cockerel, larger and fattier than a hen and rare outside specialist butchers. A 5-7 lb roasting chicken behaves much the same way, though a capon would have been heavier. The recipe insists on leaving the fat at the rump but does not say why; presumably it adds richness to the bird and the broth.
- White brothUnbrowned veal or chicken stock, lightly salted so it does not concentrate into something harsh. Brown stock will stain the skin, which defeats the whole point of a white-poached bird.
- Goose's fat liverFoie gras. The recipe asks for half a whole goose liver, i.e. roughly one lobe, which is a large amount by modern buying habits; a quarter of a lobe, or the same weight in good chicken livers, gives the forcemeat its richness without dominating it.
- Scraped baconFat pork scraped to a paste with the back of a knife; in period usage this was usually the fat of bacon or salt pork rather than anything resembling a modern rasher. Heavily smoked bacon will overpower the truffle, so fat back or unsmoked pancetta is the safer choice.
- The forcemeat must be cookedAs written it contains raw liver, raw pork fat and raw egg white and the recipe never says to cook it. Poach it as a quenelle mixture or bake it in a buttered mould set in a water bath to an internal 160F, then bed the capon on it.
- Buttered paperA cartouche: parchment cut to the diameter of the pan, buttered, laid directly on the surface. It keeps the exposed breast from drying and stops a skin forming on the broth.
- CockscombsA standard nineteenth-century white garnish, blanched and peeled, and now very hard to find outside specialist butchers. Turned button mushrooms cooked in lemon and butter, or small poached quenelles, give the same pale studding around the bird.
- TrufflesHalf a pound of fresh truffle is a sum of money most kitchens will not spend. A single small truffle plus its peelings, with the Madeira reduced and folded into the forcemeat, carries the flavour; jarred summer truffle is a weak substitute but honest about itself.
- YieldSix to eight as a main course. The forcemeat is a bed for the bird rather than a sauce; the recipe gives no sauce, but the poaching broth is worth saving and can be reduced and finished with cream.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) records the repertoire of a New York hotel that was, in menu terms, a French kitchen with an American address, and this capon is classical in method: poached in white stock, kept deliberately pale, and dressed with truffle, foie gras and cockscombs as marks of expense. Capons were often regarded as a luxury bird of the period, castrated young so they grew heavier and fatter than a cock and finer-grained than a hen, and they appear across nineteenth-century menus wherever a household wanted something more impressive than chicken and less gamey than goose. Cockscombs, blanched, peeled and simmered white, were a garnish of long standing in French cookery and turn up constantly in hotel work of the 1890s; their disappearance from restaurant plates over the following century is as good a marker as any of how far the ornamental side of grand-hotel cooking has receded.