No. 1822

Capon a la Bressoise

Chapon a la Bressoise

Singe, draw and clean well a fine capon; make a forcemeat by soaking a pound of breadcrumbs in milk, then pressing out all the liquid and adding seasoning and eight ounces of very finely chopped beef marrow and three whole eggs. Stuff, truss and tie up the capon as for an entree (No. 178). Place in a saucepan a quarter of a pound of lard and half a pound of fresh fat pork cut up in quarter inch squares, lay the capon on top and brown it slowly, then wet with some stock (No. 194a) and simmer, adding more liquid when needed until thoroughly cooked. Strain the gravy, free it of fat and untie the capon, dressing it in the middle of an oval dish, pour the well-reduced gravy over, serving a poulette sauce (No. 527) separately.

← No. 1821 Capon a l'Amphitryon Capon & Pullet No. 1823 Capon a la Financiere →

For the Modern Kitchen

A pot-roasted stuffed capon in the style of Bresse, given in Ranhofer's usual shorthand of cross-references. The technique is a braise rather than a roast, and the whole point is slow browning in fat before any liquid goes in.

The birdA capon is a castrated cockerel, fattened for tender, well-marbled flesh, and it is rarely stocked outside specialty butchers. Substitute a good 5-6 lb roasting chicken; a small turkey works if you scale the stuffing up by half.
Beef marrowEight ounces of finely chopped marrow is the character of this forcemeat and there is no clean substitute. Order marrow bones, soak them in cold water an hour, push the marrow out, and chill it firm before chopping, or it smears rather than dices.
The panadeA pound of crumbs soaked in milk and squeezed dry is a large quantity of stuffing. Use stale crumb, not dried packaged crumbs, and press it genuinely dry or the marrow will not bind and the mixture turns to paste.
Stuffing safetyBecause the cavity is packed, judge doneness by the stuffing as well as the bird: 165F at the center of the forcemeat and in the thickest part of the thigh. A stuffed 5-6 lb bird braised at a bare simmer takes roughly 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 hours.
Browning fatA quarter pound of lard plus half a pound of diced fresh fat pork is period practice for insulating the bird from the pan bottom. Unsalted pork belly or salt pork blanched first will do; halve the quantity and you lose nothing but richness.
Cross-referencesNo. 194a is one of Ranhofer's stocks; any unsalted chicken stock serves. No. 527, sauce poulette, is a velouté finished with egg yolk, lemon and chopped parsley; No. 178 is his method for trussing a bird as for an entrée, which the recipe assumes the reader has to hand.
The gravyTake "well-reduced" to mean the strained, degreased braising liquid boiled down until it lightly coats. Reducing concentrates salt, so season the stock lightly at the start.
YieldA bird of this size with the stuffing should serve about six to eight. The recipe specifies that the poulette sauce is served separately rather than poured over.

A Little History

Bresse, the district east of Lyon between the Saône and the Jura, has been celebrated for its poultry since at least the late sixteenth century, and its white-feathered, blue-legged birds were fattened on milk-soaked grain and finished in darkened cages. Here à la Bressoise takes the form of a marrow-and-breadcrumb stuffing rather than a truffled forcemeat, and gentle pot-roasting in pork fat rather than the spit. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, printed The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, which is why this entry sits in a numbered run of capon dishes and expects the reader to already have stock, sauce poulette and the trussing method to hand. The capon was a familiar item on grand American menus of the 1890s and is now uncommon in the trade, largely displaced by fast-growing modern broilers.