To boil a Capon or Chicken with Colliflowers
Cut off the buds of your flowers, and boil them in milk with a little mace till they be very tender; then take the yolks of two eggs, and strain them with a quarter of a pint of sack; then take as much thick butter being drawn with a little vinegar and slic’t lemon, brew them together; then take the flowers out of the milk, put them to the butter and sack, dish up your capon being tender boil’d upon sippets finely carved, and pour on the sauce, serve it to the table with a little salt.
Robert May’s The Accomplish’t Cook was published in 1660, a little beyond the end of our period, but this recipe is still reasonably consistent with butter and egg yolk sauce recipes that appear around the third quarter of the 16th century. I definitely cheated a little in making this; I’ve deviated a bit from May’s method, which is essentially to make a drawn butter with vinegar and lemon and then add the egg yolks and sherry and instead combined the sherry, eggs, vinegar, and lemon and added the butter over simmering water. Anway, on with the recipe…
two egg yolks
150ml sweet sherry
1 Tbsp vinegar
small splah of lemon juice
150g cold butter, cut into 2cm dice
Beat the sherry, vinegar and egg yolks together. Over simmering water, beat the cold butter a few bits at a time into the sherry mixture. Once the last of the butter is melted, the sauce is done; it should look rather like sauce hollandaise when it’s done.
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