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Boiled Capons

A boiled capon served with rice, onions, carrots, and a sauce of white sauce, egg yolks, and spices.

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

  1. Boil rice in white broth until soft, then mix with a spoonful of white sauce.

  2. Truss the capon and place it in an oval stewpan with the onion and carrot.

  3. Add enough white broth to cover the breast of the capon and cover with buttered paper.

Cook the capon

  1. Cover the stewpan and boil gently on low heat for about an hour.

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

Serve

  1. Place the capon on a dish and garnish with the rice, which has been mixed with white sauce, egg yolks, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, and butter.

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

  3. Sauce the capon with Supreme or Bechamel sauce before serving, or pour essence of fowl underneath if serving plain.

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 cooks gently in broth to stay moist and tender.
Egg yolks
Bind the rice mixture and help it set firmly when shaped.
Rice
Forms the garnish, with white sauce giving it a soft, creamy texture.
White sauce
Adds creaminess and moisture to the rice garnish.
White broth
Gently cooks the capon and rice while adding moisture and flavour.

The step that matters

Boil gently on low heat. A hard boil toughens the meat and breaks up the capon's texture, so keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer keeps it tender and moist.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, clove, carrot, 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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