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Capon Stuffed with Truffle

A capon stuffed with a mixture of truffle, bacon, spices, and lard, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Capon Stuffed with Truffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the capon

  1. Prepare the capon by emptying it through the craw, being careful not to break the gall.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine diced truffle, chopped bacon, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and fine spices.

  3. Simmer the mixture on low heat for about 30 minutes.

  4. Let it cool.

Stuff and hang

  1. Stuff the capon with the truffle mixture.

  2. Sew it up. Truss the legs outwards.

  3. Hang the stuffed capon for 2-3 days.

Roast and serve

  1. Cover it with lard.

  2. Roast the capon for about 1.5 hours.

  3. Remove the lard before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Truffle + nutmegtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  3. Truffle + peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,106 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffle
Provides the main aroma and flavour that perfumes the stuffing and the meat.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury richness, keeping the stuffing moist during cooking.
Lard
Covers the bird during roasting, protecting the skin and adding moisture and fat.
Capon
Lean-to-moderate poultry whose mild meat carries the truffle and bacon flavours.

The step that matters

Simmering the truffle mixture before stuffing. Gentle simmering softens the diced truffle and bacon and blends the seasonings, so the stuffing is evenly flavoured and moist. Cooling it before stuffing keeps the raw bird from warming unevenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, pepper. 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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