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Capon Braise, Valencienne
Procure a fine, tender Philadelphia capon of three and a half pounds. Singe, cut the head and legs off, neatly draw, wipe well and truss it nicely. Lightly butter a saucepan. Slice one small carrot, one small white onion and a sound clove of garlic cut into four pieces; place these articles in the pan and let get a light brown, stirring well while doing so. Lay the capon over the vegetables. Pour in one quart hot broth or hot water and half pint tomato sauce. Tie together two leeks, two branches celery and two branches parsley and add to the capon. Have in a small, clean piece of cloth two sprigs bay leaves, one clove, twelve allspice, twenty whole black peppers and a saltspoon thyme; tie a string around the cloth and add to the capon. Season with a tablespoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and a saltspoon Spanish saffron. Cover the pan, let come to a boil on the hot range, then place the pan in the hot oven for thirty minutes. Remove the carrots and onions, add four ounces well-cleaned Italian rice and three tablespoons Spanish red peppers, cut into very small pieces, and also three good tablespoons cooked peas. Mix with a wooden spoon; cover the pan and place in the oven for twenty-five minutes more. Remove from the oven, take up leeks, spices, etc. Dress the rice nicely on a hot dish. Untruss the capon, lay it on top of the rice and serve.
A braised bird finished with saffron rice in the pan — essentially a Valencian arroz served with a whole capon on top. Most of the work is in the aromatics; the hinge is the liquid-to-rice ratio, which as written will not give you dressable rice.
- The caponA capon is a castrated young rooster, fatter and more tender than a roasting chicken, and no longer sold in most supermarkets. A 3 1/2 to 4 lb whole chicken behaves the same way in a braise; a poussin or two will not, as they cook far faster.
- Skip the drawing and singeing"Singe, cut the head and legs off, neatly draw" describes a bird bought whole and undressed. A supermarket chicken arrives done. Trussing still matters here — it keeps the legs from splaying apart during 55 minutes of moist heat.
- Saltspoon and gill measuresSaltspoon and pint measures -- A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so the thyme and the saffron are each a scant quarter-teaspoon. Half a pint of tomato sauce is one cup; a quart of broth is four cups.
- The salt is highA full tablespoon of salt into a quart of liquid that will later be absorbed by rice reads as very salty by current taste, especially with commercial broth rather than unsalted homemade stock. Start with a teaspoon and correct when the rice goes in.
- "Hot oven"Read this as 400-425F. The pan is covered and already at a boil, so the oven is simply holding a steady braise rather than browning anything.
- Liquid to riceFour ounces of rice (a scant 2/3 cup) into roughly five cups of remaining liquid will give you soup, not the dressable rice the recipe asks you to mound on a platter. Either reduce the braising liquid hard after the first 30 minutes, ladling off all but about 1 1/2 cups, or scale the rice up to 10-12 oz.
- Italian rice and Spanish red peppersItalian rice means a short-grain risotto type — arborio or carnaroli — which will absorb the saffron liquid and hold together. "Spanish red peppers" most likely means pimientos, sweet and already cooked; if you use the jarred kind, drain and dice them.
- Bouquet and sachetThe tied leeks-celery-parsley bundle and the cloth of bay, clove, allspice, peppercorns and thyme both exist so they can be lifted out whole. A square of muslin or a tea filter works; twenty whole black peppercorns and twelve allspice are assertive but not excessive across a quart of liquid.
- Doneness and yieldThe bird is done at 165F in the thickest part of the thigh; check rather than trusting the 55-minute total, since pan and oven vary. Serves four generously, six if the rice is scaled up.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book, written out of long service in the Delmonico's kitchens in New York, and the recipe shows exactly how a grand American restaurant of the period handled a regional Spanish dish: keep the saffron, the pimientos, the short-grain rice and the peas, then place a whole trussed bird on top and send it out as a centrepiece. "Valencienne" is the French culinary shorthand for anything cooked in the manner of Valencia — that is, with saffron rice — and it turns up readily on French and Franco-American menus. The specification of a "Philadelphia capon" is worth noticing: Philadelphia poultry, and Philadelphia capons in particular, carried a premium reputation in nineteenth-century American markets much as Bresse chickens did in France, and cookbooks of the era named the source the way a wine list names a vineyard. The bird itself belonged to an age when caponising was a familiar, if not readily quantified, part of farm practice; it has largely disappeared from retail, surviving mainly as a holiday special order.