There are several ways of measuring capacitance and inductance.
The method you may use depends on the value of the capacitor/inductor.
Example: to measure a 100Henry iron cored choke, you may use a bridge circuit opearating at a low frequency, to measure an air cored 100nH inductor, you may use a resonance method operating at many Mhz.
Another way is to apply a DC constant-current to a capacitor or a DC constant-voltage to an inductor. The rate of voltage risetime for the capacitor or the current risetime for the inductor can be used to calculate their values. One advantage of this method is that it can measure polarized capacitors. Some simple multi-meters use this technique.