Roast Capon and Hen: Table Birds, Stuffing and Sauce in 1420

Which birds, and for whom

A capon is a rooster gelded so that it fattens sooner, as a printed natural history by Laurence Andrewe, quoted by the editor F. J. Furnivall, explains. The same book calls capon flesh the mightiest of all fowls and good for the blood. Fattened for the table, the capon ranked above the ordinary hen.

Prices show the ranking. A proclamation made in London in 1363, in the time of Mayor Stephen Cavendisshe, fixed the best capon at 6 pence, the same as the best goose, and a hen at 4 pence. A capon baked in a pasty was 7 pence, and so was a roast goose. A drinking song copied into a 15th-century minstrel's songbook jokes about it: bring us in no capon's flesh, the singers say, for that is often dear, but bring us in good ale.

Further down the social scale the evidence thins out. Historian Philip Slavin, who studied about 3,500 manorial accounts from eastern England for the years around 1250 to 1400, describes the records of peasant flocks as patchy, but argues that chicken keeping shifted from lords' farms toward peasants after the Black Death. In the cookery books, hens also go into the pot: worts with a hen is one of the pottages John Russell recommends, and the thick dish called mortrews starts with boiled hens and pork.

On the menu of kings and bishops

Capon held its place at the grandest tables. The menu for Henry IV's coronation feast in 1399, copied into the cookery book known as Harleian MS. 279, lists a capon of high grease, meaning a plump, fattened bird, alongside cygnets, pheasant, heron, peacocks and cranes. Another menu in the same manuscript sets out boiled chickens and roast capon in a single first course.

The showpiece birds of such feasts, the swan and the peacock, have their own story. Capon, hen and chicken are the birds that turn up again and again in the recipes.

Farced birds: medieval stuffing

Medieval cooks called stuffing farsure, and a stuffed bird was farced. Harleian MS. 279, which its editor dated to about 1430 or 1440, has a recipe headed capoun or gos farced. Parsley is parboiled with pig's fat or sheep's suet until tender, then chopped with hard-boiled egg yolks. Ground pepper, ginger, cinnamon, saffron, salt and cloves go in, with grapes when they are in season. For want of grapes, the recipe says, use onions, well boiled and then chopped. A little chopped boiled pork may be added, which the cook notes is better, especially for the capon.

A companion manuscript of about 1450 gives a simpler chik farsed: parsley, hard yolks, fresh fat, ginger, pepper, a little saffron and salt, all put into the bird before it goes on the spit. The Forme of Cury of about 1390 has a fruitier stuffing for geese in its recipe sawse madame: sage, parsley, hyssop and savory with quinces, pears, garlic and grapes, sewn into the bird so that no grease escapes.

None of these recipes uses bread. Herbs, fat, egg yolk, fruit and spice did the work that bread does in most modern stuffings.

Roasting on the spit

Roasting meant turning the bird on a spit before the fire. The recipe for chik farsed tells the cook to scald and draw the bird, leave the feet on, fill it, put it on a spit and let it roast. A neighboring recipe coats a roasting chicken with a batter of egg yolks and flour seasoned with ginger, pepper, saffron and salt.

Not every capon was served straight from the spit. In The Forme of Cury's capouns in councys, the birds are roasted until not quite half done, cut into pieces, finished in broth and served in a saffron sauce thickened with bread and garnished with hard-boiled egg.

Carving at the lord's table

Carving was a skilled office with its own rules. John Russell, usher and marshal to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, set them down in his Boke of Nurture around the middle of the 15th century. For a capon or a fat hen, the carver takes off the wings and then the legs, pours on ale or wine, and minces the meat into the sauce with sharp spice powders. The lord is served the left wing first, and the right wing as well if he eats with appetite.

The Boke of Keruynge, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1513, lists the proper term for carving each creature. A carver was told to rear that goose, lift that swan, sauce that capon, spoil that hen, frush that chicken, unbrace that mallard and disfigure that peacock. The same book says a capon should be laid on the platter as if it were about to fly.

A sauce for every bird

A roast was not complete without its sauce. Russell told servants to have ready whatever sauce their lord liked, because sauce provokes a fine appetite, and gave the standard pairings.

• Boiled capon and chicken: verjuice, the sour juice of unripe grapes.
• Roast capon: a black sauce of the capon's roasted liver ground with anise, grains of paradise, ginger, cinnamon and bread crust, mixed with verjuice and capon fat (The Forme of Cury).
• Boiled capon: a white sauce of ground blanched almonds, verjuice and ginger (The Forme of Cury).
• Chicken: green sauce or verjuice (Boke of Keruynge).
• Roast goose: garlic, vinegar or pepper.
• Pheasant and partridge: mustard with sugar.
• Swan: chawdon, a sauce reserved for cygnet and swan.

The bird at a modern feast

The main course of the St. Nicholas Day Feast at Yuletide Medieval Festival is a roasted game hen with traditional stuffing. It is a modern plate, with modern sides, but the heart of it, a small stuffed bird roasted whole for each diner, belongs to a tradition that the cooks of 1420 would have known well.

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