Medieval Capon Chicken Crowned With Eggs

Capouns in councy. Take capouns adn rost hem right hoot, that they be not half ynough, and hewe hem to gobettes, and cast hem in a pot; do therto clene broth. Seeth hem that they be tendre. Take brede and the self broth and draw it up yfere; take strong powdour and safroun and salt and cast therto. Take ayren and seeth hem harde; take out the yolkes and hew the whyte, take the pot fro the fyre and cast the whyte therinne. Messe the dysshes therwith, and lay the yolkes aboue hool and flour it with clowes.

(CI. IV. 24.)

A capon is a male chicken or a rooster that is larger than the usual chicken and apparently juicier, meatier and tastier than its counterparts with it being fed a richer diet than its peers. It is so well-fed that it is usually the preferred choice to use for roasting or baking meat.

To be honest, I can’t really place my head around this recipe. It is a dish that uses the father and a young of the same species (i.e. male chicken and egg) together in one dish, which makes it kind of interesting. Kind of cruel if you think a little bit more deeply but maybe we shouldn’t go there.

What I don’t understand is having to separate the yolks from the whites and placing the former right on top. It makes the dish look more like a rooster head (with the bright yellow crown on top). I guess we rarely eat yolks like this, separated out from the rest of the dish. Not hard boiled ones at the very least. Otherwise, the taste of this dish is interesting and quite palatable.

You can give it a try to find our what I mean – another medieval recipe attempt that I have here in my blog. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• Chicken breast fillet: 1
• Butter: 1/2 tbsp
• Chicken stock: 3 & 3/4 cups
• Saffron: a pinch
• Breadcrumb: 125g
• Salt: 1/3 tsp
• Ground blackpepper: 1/4 tsp
• Ground cinnamon: 1/4 tsp
• Ground ginger: 1/4 tsp
• Ground clove: 1/4 tsp
• Hard boiled egg: 3, whites and yolks separated

Method:

1. Preheat oven at 220 degrees Celsius.
2. Grease chicken breast fillet with butter. Bake 10min on each side till browned.
3. Cool chicken down. Dice it and place in a pan with chicken stock.
4. Cover pan and simmer on low heat for 25min.
5. While cooking, transfer 4 tbsp stock to a small bowl. Steep saffron in it for 15min.
6. Strain stock from chicken into clean pan. Set chicken aside.
7. Add saffron stock to the pan.
8. In a separate bowl, mix together breadcrumbs, salt, ground blackpepper, ground cinnamon and ground ginger.
9. Stir breadcrumb mixture into stock. Add ground cloves. Simmer till thickened.
10. Mix chicken meat into sauce and stir to combine. Scoop into center of a plate.
11. Chop egg whites finely. Edge chicken mix with egg whites.
12. Crown with whole yolks on top of dish to serve.

Disclaimers:

• This recipe was kindly adapted from ‘The Medieval Cookbook’ by Maggie Black.

• The original recipe uses a total of 6 eggs in the recipe (i.e. you should have been able to see more of the whites around the chicken mixture and yolks at the top). I reduced it to just three, which is good enough to dish out for three simple peasants at home.

Serving:
8 persons as side dish