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Boiled Capons

A boiled capon served with rice, white sauce, egg yolks, pepper, nutmeg, butter, and optional béchamel or fowl essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Capons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Truss the capon for boiling and place it in an oval stewpan with the onion and carrot.

  2. Add enough white broth to cover the breast of the capon and lay a piece of buttered paper on top.

  3. Cover the stewpan and boil gently on a slow fire for about an hour.

  4. Once done, drain the capon and remove the strings.

Make the rice garnish

  1. Work the rice over a brisk stove for five minutes.

  2. Garnish with rice boiled in white broth, mixed with white sauce, egg yolks, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, and butter.

  3. Mold the rice into large egg shapes and arrange around the capon.

Serve

  1. Place the capon on a serving dish.

  2. If serving plain, omit the sauce and pour essence of fowl underneath, made by clarifying and reducing the broth.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Capon
Is the main protein that is gently cooked in broth until tender.
Egg yolks
Bind the rice mixture and add richness and a set structure when cooked.
Rice
Forms the body of the garnish, giving the moulded shapes a soft, absorbent texture.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess so the rice mixture holds together smoothly.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the rice.

The step that matters

Boil gently on a slow fire. A gentle simmer keeps the capon tender and juicy, while a hard boil would toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, carrot, rice, sauce, egg, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, carrot, rice, sauce, egg, pepper, nutmeg. 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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