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Capon, Stuffed and Boiled

A boiled capon stuffed with a forcemeat of lemon rind, parsley, bread crumbs, butter, oysters, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Capon, Stuffed and Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing the grated lemon rind, chopped parsley, bread crumbs, butter, chopped oysters, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stuff a large capon with the forcemeat.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the capon for 2 hours in a jug of water placed in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs into the milk or cream, add the whole oysters, and warm without boiling.

  3. Pour the mixture over the fowl and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the milk or cream into a smooth, warm sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the stuffing moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Bulk and absorbency that give the forcemeat body and hold its moisture.
Oysters
Provide a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and the sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the egg and milk mixture without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but past a certain temperature they scramble, leaving a grainy, curdled sauce. Gentle heat keeps it smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, bread, butter, oyster, pepper, egg, milk):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, bread, butter, oyster, pepper, egg, milk. 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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