#AdventCalendar Day 2: Capons in Dorre

The dish is also known as Capons in Dorre, and it features in MS Pepys’ Gentyll Manly Cokere (1490). You can read the original here, alongside some translations.

Grind blanched almonds, temper them up with clear water and stir until it starts to look like milk. Strain the mixture, place it in a pot and use enough saffron, add a pinch of salt and a spoonful of sugar, and put it on the stove. Keep stirring (you’ll be sorry if you don’t), bring it to a boil and add a spoonful of white wine. Remove the stuff from the fire.

Take some white bread, slice it into small strips and toast it on a hot plate until it turns a nice brown.

You know where you stand in this.

Dip the bread into the rest of the white wine, and grill again. Then pour a little of the “milk” in bowls, drop 3 or 4 pieces of the grilled bread into each bowl and cover them with additional milk. Serve lukewarm.

Which wine?

Again, even if it’s a soup, never use for cooking a wine that you wouldn’t use for drinking. Since this will be a warm dish, we need something with a little personality. I’ve seen recommendations to use Greco di Tufo, a wine that doesn’t mess around and is mostly produced in the Southern part of Italy, around Avellino.

Where is the capon?

Good question. There’s no capon in this recipe, it’s 100% meatless, either the author is shitting you or some scribe made a clerical error by carrying capons over from previous recipes. It’s basically a bread soup with almonds, saffron and wine.

It will look a bit like this, and I stole the picture from here (in case you’re looking for a soup with actual milk).