No. 1821

Capon a l'Amphitryon

Chapon a l'Amphitryon

A capon is a castrated cock fattened for the table; truss a good capon as for an entree (No. 178) selecting it white and very fat, fill the inside with a delicate quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) with truffles into which mix some chestnuts roasted in the oven and broiled Chipolata sausages after removing their skins, and stoned verdal olives; rub the breast over with half a lemon, then cover with bards of fat pork. Cook the capon as for poeler (No. 12) and when done, dress on a rice foundation and garnish around with clusters of channeled mushrooms (No. 118) with half-glaze stuffed tomatoes, and whole truffles with glaze (No. 402), a little Madeira and butter, strain the stock, free it of its fat and reduce with the same quantity of veloute (No. 415). Insert three skewers garnished with glazed truffles and crawfish on top and serve the sauce separately.

← No. 1820 Zampino, Modena Style, with String Beans—Stu Capon & Pullet No. 1822 Capon a la Bressoise →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full Ranhofer service dish: a stuffed bird cooked by poêler, set on rice, ringed with garnishes and finished with ornamental skewers. The cross-references do most of the work in the original, so the notes below fill in what they stood for.

The hinge: poêler, not roastingThe hinge: poeler, not roasting -- Poeler means cooking the bird covered in a heavy pot on a bed of aromatic vegetables and matignon with butter, basting often, so it half-steams and half-roasts in its own fat. Ranhofer gives no oven setting; in a modern kitchen a moderate oven, somewhere around 325F in a covered casserole with the lid off at the end to color, gets the pale, moist flesh the dish is built around. Roasting uncovered in a hot oven produces a different bird entirely.
Finding a caponA capon is a castrated cockerel, fattened to 6-9 lb with a high proportion of fat and fine-grained breast meat. Specialty butchers and some holiday poultry counters still carry them; otherwise use a large roasting chicken of 5-6 lb and accept a leaner result. Do not substitute a turkey, which behaves nothing like it under a lid.
Stuffed bird, doubled timingA dense quenelle forcemeat packed with chestnuts and sausage insulates the cavity and slows cooking badly. Cook to 165F at the center of the stuffing and 165F in the thigh, checked separately; on a 7 lb bird this can run well over two hours. Cooking the forcemeat separately in a buttered mold and dressing it around the bird is the safer modern habit.
Bards of fat porkSheets of pork back fat, tied over the breast to keep it from drying. Fatback or unsmoked streaky pork sliced thin does the job; thick-cut bacon works but brings smoke the dish does not want.
Chipolata, verdal olives, trufflesChipolata here means a small, coarse, lightly seasoned fresh pork sausage, not the herby British breakfast link. Verdal is a large green table olive from the Midi, plump and mild; any large firm green olive, stoned, stands in. The whole truffles and truffle garnish are the expensive heart of the dish and there is no honest substitute; sauteed cremini give texture but not the point.
Channeled mushroomsRanhofer's No. 118 is button mushroom caps cut with spiral grooves using a small knife or channeling tool, then cooked white in butter, lemon and a little water. Purely decorative; plain turned or whole caps cook the same.
The sauceStrain the poeling stock, skim the fat thoroughly, then reduce with an equal volume of veloute (a white stock sauce thickened with blond roux). The 'little Madeira and butter' in the original sits next to the glazed truffles and may belong to that garnish rather than the sauce; if you put them in the sauce, add them at the end, off the heat.
The skewersThe three garnished skewers are hatelets, ornamental silver spikes threaded with truffles and crayfish and stuck into the bird for presentation at table. They are not eaten from and are entirely optional; if you use plain metal skewers, remove them before carving.
YieldA capon dressed this way, with rice, forcemeat and garnishes, serves eight to ten as a main course. It is a platter dish meant to be brought whole to the table and carved there.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled from more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house style plainly: a French grande cuisine set piece, cross-referenced to numbered base preparations so that a brigade could assemble it without further instruction. Amphitryon is the classical byword for a host — from Moliere's line that the true Amphitryon is the one who provides the dinner — and on nineteenth-century French menus it is often taken to mark a dish meant to flatter the man paying for it, which is to say a lavish one. The capon itself was the prestige bird of the period: caponizing produced a larger, fatter, more tender carcass than a cockerel would ever reach, and it commanded a price to match. The practice fell away in most of the American trade during the twentieth century as fast-growing broiler breeds made the extra labor pointless, which is why a dish that assumed any good market could supply a white, very fat capon now begins with a hunt for one.