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Capon, Braise Loree
Singe, cut head and feet from a tender capon of four to four and a half pounds weight, neatly draw and wipe dry. Finely chop a medium onion, place in a saucepan with a tablespoon butter and gently fry for five minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile. Add meat of two country sausages, mix well while cooking for one minute, then add a half pint well-drained, cooked corn, a gill cream, two tablespoons bread crumbs, half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons, pepper. Mix well, cook for five minutes, then stuff capon with preparation. Truss, arrange a thin slice larding pork over breast and tie it around with string. Place a mirepoix in a braising pan, add a tablespoon butter, lay capon over, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and set in a slow oven for thirty-five minutes. Bring it to oven door, pour in half a gill white wine, reset in oven without cover for fifteen minutes, then pour in a gill broth and two gills demi-glace. Reset in oven and cook for thirty-five minutes more, being careful to baste and turn capon quite frequently. Remove, dress capon on a hot dish, untruss and take out lard. Skim fat off surface of gravy, reduce it on the fire to half the quantity, strain through a Chinese strainer over capon, arrange glazed chestnuts around and serve.
A braised stuffed capon in the classic French manner, written for a cook who already keeps demi-glace and mirepoix on hand. The measurements are the main obstacle, along with an oven temperature that will not get a stuffed four-pound bird done in the time given.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockEighty-five minutes in a 300F oven will not reliably bring a stuffed 4 to 4.5 lb bird through, and the stuffing contains raw sausage. Braise at 325-350F instead and take it out when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F and the centre of the stuffing reads the same.
- CaponA castrated cockerel, fatter and more tender than a hen, and no longer sold in most supermarkets. A good 4-5 lb roasting chicken is the direct substitute; a small free-range bird will be closer in flavour than a commodity broiler.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so a gill of cream is 4 fl oz and two gills of demi-glace is a cup. Half a pint of corn is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so "two saltspoons pepper" is half a teaspoon.
- Oven heatA "slow oven" in books of this period is usually reckoned at around 300F, though period sources range from roughly 250F to 325F. For the reasons above, treat that as too low here and work at 325-350F, covered for the first stage as the recipe implies, then uncovered after the wine goes in.
- Larding porkA thin sheet of fresh pork fatback or unsmoked salt pork, tied over the breast to baste it. Blanched salt pork or thin-cut unsmoked bacon works; if using salt pork, cut the teaspoon of salt on the bird accordingly.
- Mirepoix and demi-glaceMirepoix here means roughly diced onion, carrot and celery laid in the pan as a bed, not a fine cut. Demi-glace is reduced brown veal stock; a good reduced brown chicken stock, or a commercial demi-glace concentrate, will carry the sauce.
- Country sausageBulk breakfast-style pork sausage, casing removed. Two links is roughly 2 to 4 oz. The sausage gets about six minutes in the pan in all (one minute alone, five more once the corn, cream and crumbs go in), which will not cook it through before it goes into the bird -- another reason to verify the stuffing temperature.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. A fine sieve does the same job. Skim the fat first, then reduce the liquid by half before straining it over the bird.
- YieldServes four generously, five at a stretch. The glazed chestnuts are the traditional garnish; vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts glazed in butter and a little stock and sugar save an hour of peeling.
The heading "Braise Loree" points to the habit, common in grand-hotel cooking around 1900, of attaching a proper name to a garnish or treatment; the international cook books of the period are full of such titles, most of them now untraceable to any particular person. What is documented is the method: a braise in the French sense, where the bird sits on a mirepoix, is moistened in stages with wine, broth and demi-glace, and the cooking liquid is skimmed, reduced and strained into its own sauce. Capons were a standard festive bird in Europe and America well into the twentieth century, prized because caponising produced a heavier, fatter, more tender carcass than a cockerel would otherwise make; they have largely disappeared from retail as fast-growing broiler breeds made the practice commercially pointless. The corn in the stuffing is the American note in an otherwise thoroughly French preparation, and the glazed chestnuts around the dish mark it as autumn or winter cooking.