What, Where, When:
- Roast chicken with a garlic sauce.
- Based on a recipe from central France, dated to approximately 1466.
Original Recipe and Translation
A rost de poullaille, de poussins, du verjust. A grosse poulaille, de la Jansse d’amends de gingibre blanc et de verjust.– Le Recuil de Riom.
A roast of chicken, of fish, with verjuice. A fat chicken, with almond jance with white ginger and verjuice. (Translation by Jennifer Soucy)
Alternate Recipes for Jance Sauces:
Taillevent, Ginger Jance: Grind ginger and almonds, but no garlic, infuse this in verjuice, then boil it. Some people put white wine in it (T. Scully, The Viandier of Taillevent: An Edition of all Extant Manuscripts 296)
Taillevent, Garlic Jance: Grind ginger, garlic and almonds, infuse them in good verjuice, and boil. Put white wine in it if you wish.” (T. Scully, The Viandier of Taillevent: An Edition of all Extant Manuscripts 296)
For roast geese, garlic sauce of Belgium. Grind garlic and put to cook with egg yolk. And grind everything together and strain with verjuice and a little bread. Le Recuil de Riom
Discussion:
This recipe is from Le Recuil de Riom, a source more fully discussed in the full translation.
- Because the ginger-almond version of jance sauce was too similar to that served with the fish, I decided to make the Garlic Sauce.
- Although Le Recuil states that this sauce is for goose, both ginger and garlic jances are mentioned in other contemporary cookbooks as being served with goose so I believe the sauces are interchangeable.
Roast Chicken with Garlic Sauce
Ingredients
½ capon, salted and roasted
3 tablespoons minced garlic
3 egg yolks
1 tsp. ground ginger
Verjuice
Salt
1 cup chicken drippings and broth
Directions
- Salt and roast the capon simply, baking in a 375° oven until fully cooked.
- Collect drippings from the roasting dish, and add additional broth to make one cup.
- Mix the juices, egg yolks, garlic and ginger in a saucepan, and heat until the sauce thickens as much as possible, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.
- Add a splash of verjuice to balance flavor.
- After simmering for several minutes, when the sauce thickened no more, place in a blender and puree to eliminate any bits of garlic.
- Serve sauce over capon.
Sources
Sources are detailed here.
