Skip to main content
Main

Roast Capon Stuffed with Rice

Roast capon stuffed with seasoned rice, bacon‑topped breast, served with watercress and Veloute sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roast Capon Stuffed with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Draw, singe, and wash the capon, then dry it.

Stuff and truss

  1. Boil the rice in stock until cooked.

  2. Season the rice with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and herbs.

  3. Stuff the capon with the seasoned rice and truss it.

  4. Cover the breast with bacon and tie it with string.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the capon, basting occasionally.

  2. When nearly done, remove the bacon and brown the breast.

  3. Serve garnished with watercress and Veloute sauce.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Capon
Forms the main meat, cooking to tender, juicy flesh under dry oven heat.
Rice
Cooked in stock and stuffed in the bird, it absorbs juices and adds bulk and texture.
Stock
Cooks the rice and carries flavour into the stuffing, adding moisture.
Bacon strips
Laid over the breast, it bastes the meat with rendered fat and protects it from drying.

The step that matters

Remove the bacon and brown the breast when nearly done. Bacon shields the breast while the bird cooks through. Removing it near the end lets the skin brown and crisp, since browning depends on surface dryness and direct heat.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, pepper, thyme, parsley, watercress, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, thyme, parsley, watercress, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes