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Larded Capon

A capon larded with bacon, stuffed with sausage or lemon filling, braised with root vegetables and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Larded Capon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw the capon and cut bacon into thin strips.

  2. Lard the capon in neat, alternate rows down the breast.

  3. Stuff the capon with sausage meat or lemon stuffing and truss it.

Stew

  1. Place the capon in a braising pan with the turnip, carrot, leek, herbs, cloves, peppers, and mace.

  2. Butter a piece of kitchen paper and lay it over the capon.

  3. Add enough stock to reach the paper, then stew slowly for about 1 hour.

  4. Remove the paper and place hot coals on the lid of the braising pan.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Capon
Provides the main body of meat that becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat that bastes the lean breast meat, keeping it moist and flavourful as it cooks.
Butter
Enriches the buttered paper that covers the bird, adding fat and a little richness to the moisture.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the capon and builds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Add enough stock to reach the paper, then stew slowly for about 1 hour.. Gentle, low simmering keeps the connective tissue breaking down slowly so the meat turns tender without drying. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and pushes out moisture, so the liquid should only simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, carrot, leek, clove, pepper, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, carrot, leek, clove, pepper, butter. 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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