HFF 5.6: Luncheon

Still writing up the backlog....

 

The Challenge: Luncheon. Make a mid-day meal from your preferred era.

[I sorta cheated on the spirit here, since the mid-day meal of the 16th century is still dinner, aka the main meal of the day.]

The Recipe: "To boyle a Capon" from A Book of Cookrye

Take your Capon and boyle it tender, and take out a little of the broth and put it in a little pipkin with whole mace and a good deale of ginger, and quartered Dates, and boyle your corance and prunes in very faire water by themselves, for making of your broth black and thicken your broth with yolks of egges and wine strained togither or a little Vergious, and let your broth boile no more when you have thickened it, for it will quail.  Then cut sippits in a platter, and lay in your Capon, and laye your fruite upon it, so dooing serve it out.

The Date/Year and Region: British, 1591 (First edition 1583)

How Did You Make It: Over an actual fire!

I started by bringing a cauldron of water to boil over the fire, then adding a whole (pre-cleaned) chicken, and letting it continue boiling ~90 minutes. At that point, I cut the dates and prunes, and put 1/2 cup of each into a sauce pan with ~1 cup of the chicken water, and set it to boil on a trivet (which happened almost instantly--it was a very fast fire). Having misread the recipe, at this point I also the added 1/2 cup zante currants, 1/4 tsp each of powdered ginger and mace [the prunes and dates should have boiled separate first, then been combined with the broth and everything else]. Once the sauce had started boiling, I pulled it off the fire, added 1/2 cup white white and 1 egg (beaten well together), and stirred the sauce near-but-not-on the fire until it thickened, which took about a minute. Once the sauce was done, I confirmed the chicken had reached 165F, then removed it from the cauldron. 

To plate, I cut sippets of bread, arranged the chicken on top, and poured the sauce over all.

Time to Complete: About 2 hours. It would have gone ~30 minutes faster if I'd started the sauce earlier, since the fixed minimum time is "how long the chicken needs to cook through". 

Total Cost: About $25. 

How Successful Was It?: Needed a bit of salt. but otherwise good. The sippets got soggy fast, so using toasted bread would have been better there. When I made this again (with 4 birds, for an event) the next week, I added some salt to the boiling water, which improved the flavor to both bird and sauce. That second time, I used only 3 eggs instead of 4 in the sauce, and whether due to insufficient egg or less heat, the sauce never really thickened nicely. In both cases, I ended up boiling the chicken longer than needed, such that the bird started falling apart when I dished it up. I'm still getting used to the fruit+meat flavor combinations of the medieval and renaissance periods, but this one does work in my opinion.

How Accurate Is It?: One of my more accurate attempts, what with actually cooking it on a fire both times. I even used a ceramic pipkin for heating some of the second-attempt sauce next to the fire--and the first time, ate it with period-appropriate utensils, ie, the hand. The usual zante-currant-for-currant substitution was used, and the proportions in the sauces were all a fortunate guesses from my first attempt. I don't have an accurate 16th century cauldron or cooking pot, so 20th century cast iron was used. Also, I used a general grocery store chicken, not a real capon (though I'm given to understand that modern meat birds are closer in size to capons, ie neutered roosters, than to other historic birds). 

Sauce and boiling chicken (with bonus 20th century
dessert in the dutch oven).

Boyl'd Capon.