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Roasted Capons
Cut off the first joint of the pinions, beat the breastbone flat with a rolling pin, push a skewer through the pinion bringing the middle of the legs close, pass a skewer through the legs, body, and remaining pinion, twist the neck, and fasten the head on the skewer the bill pointing forwards; pass another skewer through the sides, and fasten the legs close on either side. Run a skewer through all, and the capon is ready for cooking.
This is a trussing method rather than a full roasting recipe: Oscar tells you how to get the bird into shape and stops there. What follows fills in the missing parts and translates the butchery of 1896 into what a modern kitchen can actually do.
- What a capon isA capon is a young cockerel castrated before maturity, grown large and fat with a high proportion of tender breast. They are sold seasonally by specialist butchers and some mail-order farms, usually 6 to 9 lb. A 4 to 5 lb roasting chicken takes the same treatment and cooks faster.
- PinionsThe pinion is the outermost wing joint, the wingtip section. Cutting off the first joint removes the part that burns before the bird is done; keep the tips for stock.
- Beating the breastboneFlattening the keel with a rolling pin widens the bird so it cooks evenly and carves in broader slices. Cover the breast with a towel or a sheet of plastic first, or you risk driving fragments of bone into the meat.
- The headSkewering the head with the bill pointing forward appears in period trussing instructions for poultry brought whole to the table. Birds now come headless; skip that clause entirely and simply fold the neck skin under and secure it.
- SkewersPeriod kitchens used long steel trussing skewers, often withdrawn before the bird went to the table and replaced with silver ones for show. Stainless skewers work, but butcher's twine holds the legs and wings just as tightly and leaves no holes for juices to run out.
- Roasting, since the book omits itStart at 425F for 20 minutes to set the skin, then drop to 350F. Figure roughly 15 minutes per pound total, and take it out when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F. Capons carry more fat than chicken and baste themselves better, but the flattened breast still benefits from a butter-soaked cloth over it for the first hour.
- Resting and yieldRest 20 minutes before carving; a bird this size loses a great deal of juice if cut immediately. A 7 lb capon serves eight generously.
Capons were the prestige poultry of the nineteenth-century hotel kitchen: castration produces a bird that puts on weight and intramuscular fat instead of muscle, giving meat far more forgiving on a banquet timetable than an ordinary rooster. The practice is ancient, generally traced to Roman sumptuary law restricting the fattening of hens, which farmers are said to have sidestepped by capping cockerels instead. The instruction to fasten the head on with the bill pointing forward belongs to a service tradition in which the whole bird was carried to the room and carved in view of the guests, so its identity and its quality had to be legible at a glance. That style of presentation, and the trade in capons that supported it, both faded in America over the twentieth century as broiler chickens became uniform, cheap and sold in parts.