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Roast Capon
Pick all the feathers out, cut off the head and feet, draw, singe and wipe the inside of a tender capon of five and a half to six pounds. Sprinkle the inside with a teaspoon salt; truss well; place a thin piece larding pork on the breasts of the capon, typing a string around. Lay it in a roasting pan with quarter gill cold water; place in a moderate oven and roast for thirty minutes; then turn it over, baste all over with its own gravy and roast for forty minutes more. Remove it, untruss, dress on a hot dish, decorate with watercress all around. Skim the fat from the gravy, then pour in two tablespoons broth, boil for two minutes. Strain the gravy over the capon and serve.
The bird arrives dressed at the supermarket, so the first two sentences are now obsolete — but the roasting time is the part that needs real attention.
- Timing is far too shortSeventy minutes total will not bring a six-pound bird to a safe temperature in a 350F oven; expect closer to two hours. Roast to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone, and rest 15 minutes before carving.
- A moderate ovenUsually taken as somewhere around 350F, though the original gives no figure. Some cooks prefer to start at 425F for 15 minutes for colour, then drop to 350F.
- Quarter gillA gill is half a cup, so a quarter gill is 2 tablespoons. It is there only to keep the pan drippings from scorching; top it up if the pan runs dry.
- CaponA castrated young cockerel, fattened for tender, fine-grained meat with a heavy layer of breast fat. Specialty butchers still sell them around the winter holidays; otherwise use a 5-6 lb roasting chicken and accept slightly leaner breast meat.
- Larding porkA thin sheet of fatback or unsmoked salt pork tied over the breast. Sliced pancetta, unsmoked bacon, or a butter-soaked double layer of cheesecloth all serve the same purpose — remove it for the last 20 minutes so the skin browns.
- Draw and singeDrawing means removing the innards; singeing burns off pinfeathers over an open flame. On a modern bird, just pull the giblet packet, check the cavity, and pluck any remaining quills with tweezers.
- The gravySkimming, then deglazing with 2 tablespoons of broth and boiling two minutes, produces a thin jus rather than a thickened gravy — a few spoonfuls per plate. Scrape the browned fond off the pan bottom while it boils.
- YieldThe original states none; a bird of this size will serve roughly four to six with the usual accompaniments.
The capon — a cockerel castrated young so it fattens without the toughness and gaminess of a mature rooster — was for centuries the standard festive bird of European tables, valued because it grew larger and more tender than a hen and could be held until wanted. Recipes like this one, from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), were written for a kitchen that still received poultry whole and feathered, which is why the instructions open with plucking, singeing and drawing rather than with the oven. The bacon or fatback bard over the breast is the classic answer to the problem that dogs all roast poultry: the legs need more heat than the breast can take. Caponising fell out of general practice in much of the English-speaking world over the twentieth century, partly as fast-growing broiler breeds made the extra labour pointless, and the bird is now a seasonal specialty rather than a staple.