History
The Romans are credited with inventing the capon. The Lex Faunia of 162 BC forbade fattening hens to conserve grain rations. To get around this the Romans castrated roosters, which resulted in a doubling of size. European gastronomic texts of the past dealt largely with capons, as the ordinary chicken of the farmyard was regarded as peasant fare, "popular malice crediting monks with a weakness for capons."
Also, capons were considered to be a guilty pleasure of the gourmand in Elizabethan England, as shown by the following remark of Prince Hal to Falstaff:
- What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.
- Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act I, Scene 2
Read more about this topic: Capon
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