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Boiled Capon, Oyster Sauce
Singe, cut off the head and feet, draw, wipe, dry and truss a fine five-pound capon. Place it in a large saucepan with one and a half gallons cold water, and as soon as it comes to a boil season with a tablespoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, adding one sliced carrot, one sliced onion, one small sliced turnip. Tie in a bunch two branches celery, two branches parsley and two leeks and add to the pan; add also two cloves, one bay leaf and a saltspoon thyme. Cover the pan and let gently boil for one and a half hours. Remove, dress the capon on a hot dish, untruss; suppress all the broth from the inside of the capon, dress the capon on a hot dish and serve with an oyster sauce, in a separate saucebowl.
Strain the broth of the capon in a stone jar, let cool off, and keep it till to-morrow.
A plain poached bird with a rich by-product: the recipe is really two dishes, since the broth is explicitly saved for the next day. A few of its terms and habits need translating.
- CaponA capon is a castrated cockerel, fattened for tender, well-marbled flesh; you will not find one at an ordinary supermarket. A 5 lb roasting chicken behaves the same way in this recipe.
- Draw and trussModern birds arrive drawn, singed and with head and feet removed, so the first clause is already done. Trussing still matters here: tie the legs and pin the wings so the bird holds its shape through 90 minutes in liquid.
- "Gently boil" means simmerThe hinge of the dish. Hold the water at 180-190F, with barely a tremor at the surface. A true rolling boil will shred the breast and cloud the broth you are meant to keep.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. The tablespoon of salt is for a gallon and a half of water, which is a light seasoning, not a brine.
- Water quantityA gallon and a half is six quarts, comfortably more than enough to submerge a 5 lb bird; a tall, narrow pot keeps it covered with less. Excess water dilutes the broth without helping the chicken.
- DonenessNinety minutes is generous for a modern 5 lb chicken. Check the thickest part of the thigh at about 70 minutes and pull the bird at 165F internal, then hold it in the hot broth off the heat while you finish the sauce.
- Oyster sauceNot the bottled Cantonese condiment. In books of this period it generally means a white sauce or veloute, often built on the poaching broth and cream, with shucked oysters and their liquor added at the end. Oysters need one to two minutes off the boil; a quarter of an hour turns them to erasers.
- The brothA stone jar in a cold larder did the work of a refrigerator. Strain the broth, cool it quickly in a shallow pan or over ice, then refrigerate; skim the set fat before using it within three days, or freeze it.
- YieldA 5 lb bird serves four to six, plus several quarts of light chicken broth.
Boiled fowl with oyster sauce was a fixture of English and American company dinners through the nineteenth century, and it survives here because it was still what a careful cook served when a bird had to feed a table without the risk of a scorched roast. Oysters were relatively cheap and plentiful on the Atlantic coast for much of this period rather than a luxury, which is why they turn up in sauces, stuffings and soups throughout books of the time. The instruction to strain the broth into a stone jar and keep it until to-morrow is the real lesson of the page: in a kitchen without refrigeration, today's poaching liquid was tomorrow's soup or sauce base.