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Boiled Capons

A boiled capon served with rice, white sauce, egg yolks, pepper, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 the rice

  1. Boil rice in white broth until soft.

  2. Mix the cooked rice with a spoonful of white sauce.

Cook the capon

  1. Truss the capon.

  2. Place the trussed capon in an oval stewpan with the onion and carrot.

  3. Add enough white broth to cover the breast of the capon.

  4. Cover the stewpan with buttered paper.

  5. Cover the stewpan.

  6. Boil gently on low heat for about an hour.

  7. Drain the capon.

  8. Remove the strings from the capon.

Garnish and serve

  1. Place the capon on a dish.

  2. Garnish the capon with the rice mixed with white sauce, egg yolks, pepper, nutmeg, and butter.

  3. Mold the rice into large egg shapes.

  4. Arrange the molded rice around the capon.

  5. If serving plain, pour essence of fowl under the capon instead of 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. 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
Provides the main meat, which is gently simmered until cooked through and tender.
Rice
Forms a soft, moist base that is shaped into the garnish around the capon.
Egg yolks
Bind the rice mixture so it holds its shape when molded, and add richness.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess to the rice mixture so it stays soft and cohesive.

The step that matters

Boil gently on low heat. A gentle simmer cooks the capon through while keeping the meat tender and moist. A hard boil toughens the proteins and breaks the meat apart.

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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