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Capon, Stewed

A stewed capon served over rice with a buttery stock gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Capon, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Blanch and boil the rice as if for curry.

Brown the capon and onions

  1. While the rice is cooking, fry the onions in butter or dripping.

  2. Add the capon joints to the pan and fry until browned.

  3. Transfer the capon and onions to a stewpan and cover with stock.

  4. Stew gently for about an hour until tender.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix a little gravy with the rice, season, and spread on a dish.

  2. Place the stewed capon on top of the rice.

  3. Thicken the remaining gravy with flour and butter, then add white wine.

  4. Pour some gravy over the dish and serve the rest in a tureen.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Capon
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle stewing.
Patna rice
Forms the absorbent bed that soaks up the savoury gravy and holds the capon.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding depth to the stock-based gravy.
Flour
Thickens the remaining gravy so it clings to the capon and rice.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the onions and capon brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Stew gently for about an hour. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the capon tender and prevents the meat from toughening and falling apart in the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, pepper, lemon, flour, white wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, pepper, lemon, flour, white wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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