Capon in Salome:

Take a Capoun & skalde hym, Roste hym, then take pike almaunde, mylke, tmper it with wyne Whyte or Red, take a lytyl Saunderys & a lytyl safroun, & make it a marbyl coloure, & so atte the dressoure throw on hym in ye kychoun, & throw the mylke a-boue, & athat is most seemly, & serve forth. (Renfrow, pp 110)

Translation:

Take a capon and boil him, roast him, then take pike (?) almonds milk, temper it with wine. White or red.  Take a little sandalwood and a little saffron and make it a marble color and so at the dressing throw them in the kitchen and throw the almond milk and that is most seemly, and serve it.

Ingredients:

1 chicken roasted (with saved melted fat roughly  1 cup)

1 C almond milk           1 tsp saffron     a pinch of sandalwood

1/2 C red wine or white wine

Redaction:

This recipe has sandalwood in it.  Modernly sandalwood is considered an incense, in period sandalwood was used in foods as well.  This has a very very strong flavor for a little goes a loooong way.  I also used bought white and red wine in small bottles instead of home made.  I only had sweet mead on hand and I wanted some thing closer to recipe…unusual I know!

This recipe calls for almond milk.  Almond milk is rather common in English recipes.  So a quick run down on how to make.  Take ground almonds (here they are with a french press but you can use just a regular cup or glass you would normally pour water into).

Next add water.  I use the ratio of 1 cup of almond meal to two cups of water.

Then drain off the milk liquid, known as almond milk.

Nutritious and mildly decadent in period.  SAVE the wet ground almonds.  They are still very useful.

For part of this recipe I had to use the fat from the chicken, about 1 cup worth, melted (this includes the jelly part as well, to that I added the almond milk,

then the saffron and sandalwood.

Now the sandalwood has a strong smell and a stronger taste.  I had to go very very easy on the sandalwood to make sure that I did not have a sandalwood sauce but a mixture of all the flavors.  When I say pinch..I mean a small pinch.Not a huge pinch but just the barest amount possible.  Stir this in and taste.  Remember you can add more but you can’t subtract once you add to a recipe.  So start with the small amount for flavoring with a strong spice.

Once the sauce was made, I divided this into two batches and added white wine to one and red wine to the second.

This gives me two sauces instead of one.  The taste prior to the wine is silky and very rich.  Renfrow says to boil the sauce in a pan till reduced though the original recipe does not say to boil.  (Renfrow, pp. 110)  I simmered these until slightly reduced, about 5 minutes.

I wanted to have two sauces from this recipe so I added white wine to half the mixture and red wine to the other half.  This gives two sauces instead of one.  As this recipe stands you’ll end up with roughly 3 cups of sauce.  1 and ½ if you divde the base sauce into two.

These are a really nice sauces.  I think the red is my favorite so far!