Chicken stewed with apples or “Hungarian Capon in Pottage”

The two part cooking of chicken is for two reasons:

1. Chickens humours are of a dry humour and you need to simmer them to add moist to balance them, and
2. it insures that the chicken is cooked through so it won’t make someone who is cooking without reliable heat, or meat thermometer, ill.

I used chicken legs but this recipe calls for Capon, which is much more expensive.

The apples are cut into quarters, this could mean that you should have chunks of apples when the sauce is done cooking, or that the cook knows they will cook long enough to thicken sauce. Or both!

I think the flavour from the pine nuts helps balance out the sweetness of the other sauce ingredients. If you needed to remove the pine nuts I’d try dried mushrooms or toasted almonds to give a umami, or savoury taste.

One of Jeff”s apples

Step 1

Frying apples and onions together

Bring to boil

Finished product

Hungarian Capon in pottage. Take a slightly cooked capon, cut it into quarters, & fry in butter a little, that it is not at all black: then take onions cut into slices, & apples cut into little quarters, & fry in butter, & cast it on the capon in a pot: then put therein a little broth & wine, & let it boil again, & put herein saffron, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, pine nuts, & make stew well until it is well cooked, & serve. Ouverture de Cuisine
(France, 1604 – Daniel Myers, trans.)

Ingredients

• 6 chicken pieces
• 1 tbsp & 1 tbsp salted butter
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 apples, peeled, quartered, cores removed
• 1.5 cups broth
• 1/2 cup wine
• 1 pinch saffron
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 cup pine nuts**

DIrections

1. Heat a deep cast iron frying pan on medium. Add chicken pieces and 1 tbsp butter, fry until chicken is brown. Remove chicken from pan and set aside.
2. Add 1 tbsp butter to chicken pan* with onions and apple pieces. Fry until onions soften.
3. Gently place chicken back to pan, cover with broth and wine and then bring to a boil.
4. Stir in remaining ingredients and reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until chicken falls off bone or is well cooked. Your kitchen will smell wonderful.
5. Serve chicken with cooking liquid.

*It is a different instruction from the original but I like using one pan when I can instead of two. If pressed for time fry apples and onions in a second pot as you are browning chicken pieces.

**Costs more than the chicken did.

Quince and Almond Tart or “To Make an Almond Tart”

To make an almond tart. Take half a pound of almonds peeled and ground, quince preserved in sugar, a dozen dates well washed therein, & chop very small with the quince, & half an ounce of cinnamon, three ounces of sugar, two yolks of eggs, & mix all with the almonds, & make the tart like the others. Master Lancelot de Casteau, Montios Ouverture de Cuisine (1604)

Ingredients

• 8 oz ground almonds
• 2 cups stewed or canned quince (~2 quinces worth) **
• 12 cooking dates, chopped small
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 3 oz raw cane sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 large tart shell

Directions

1. preheat oven to 350
2. Mix all ingredients together well, and pat into tart shell. Mixture will be paste like.
3. Bake for 45 minutes or until pie crust is golden and filling is firm but sticky.

** could probably use 2.5 cups of quince or more. Would experiment with adding in quince liquid or using quince jam if making again. I thought it would be too sweet with the sugar syrup but the pie is awfully thick. 

Meatballs in Broth or “Another Sort Of Dressed veal”

So this recipe could be a meatball soup, given the amount of broth required to cover the meatballs is more than one would use as a sauce. It is strongly flavoured though, so I would serve it with sops (bread slices) if you were doing that. Otherwise it is a wonderful lemon bite around the delicately flavoured veal (*cough* bland *cough*).

My friend Diane would love this.

Veal was on sale so tomorrow I will be making a veal pie.

Another sort of dressed veal.
Take the meat so as to have made ham all as trimmed, & make round balls or strips like little sausages, & put them to stew in good broth, & a salted lemon cut in strips, mint, marjoram therein, a little verjuice or wine, & put them to stew well, & serve as such. (France, 1604 – Daniel Myers, trans. Ouverture de Cuisine)

Ingredients

• 1lb ground veal
• salt
• 1.5 liters of bone broth
• 1 salted lemon
• 1 branch each mint, marjoram
• 1/3 cup verjuice (or wine)

Directions

1. Salt the veal to taste and then form into balls ~1 oz, you should get 15-16 balls from 1 lb of veal.
2. Pour broth into a sauce pan and add the rest of the ingredients then bring to boil on high.
3. Drop meatballs into boiling broth and then reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer balls for 7 minutes.
4. Serve balls with broth (and sops). (My family added more salt)