[Sca-cooks] Elizabethan chickeny goodness

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

I made this last weekend for dinner on Saturday, at our annual Black 
Hills event (Hi, Mistress Aldyth!). This is from The Good Housewife's 
Jewell:

To boile a Capon with Orenges and Lemmons. Take Orenges or Lemmons pilled, 
and cutte them the long way, and if you can keepe your cloves whole and 
put them into your best broth of Mutton or Capon with prunes or currants 
and three or fowre dates, and when these have beene well sodden put whole 
pepper great mace, a good piece of suger, some rose water, and eyther 
white or claret Wine, and let al these seeth together a while, and so 
serve it upon soppes with your capon.
**********

What actually happened was that three boneless/skinless chicken breast 
halves got cut into largish chunks and put in the crock pot with two cans 
of chicken broth, a goodly amount of prunes, about eight dates, the 
innards of two navel oranges sliced the wrong way, some peppercorns, a 
few cloves, and about an inch of cinnamon stick because it was in the jar 
with the cloves.

I skipped the sugar on the theory that the oranges in the original recipe 
were probably sour oranges (since the other option is lemons), skipped the 
rosewater because the Consort has almost no sense of smell and wouldn't 
notice it anyway, skipped the mace because I neglected to pack it, and 
totally forgot the wine.

It was in the crock pot on high for at least 6 hours. What happened was 
that the prunes, oranges, and dates lost most of their structural 
integrity--I imagine that if I submitted it all to something like a 
blender or mortar & pestle it would make a thinish sauce. It got served 
over slightly dry untoasted rolls (sliced in half like hamburger buns) 
because the toaster turned out to not work.

So since what I *did* make was extremely tasty, I am going to try it again 
with all the correct ingredients this time and see what happens.


Margaret FitzWilliam