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To Stew Canvas-Back Ducks
Place the giblets in a saucepan with the yellow rind of a lemon pared thin, a very little water, and a piece of butter rolled in flour, and a very little salt, and cayenne. Let them stew gently, keeping the saucepan covered. Half roast the ducks, saving the gravy that falls from them. Then cut them up, put in a large stewpan with the gravy (having first skimmed off the fat) and just water enough to keep them from burning. Place the pan over a moderate fire and let them stew gently till done. Toward the last (having removed the giblets) pour over the ducks the gravy from the small saucepan, and stir in a large glass of port wine and a glass of currant jelly. Send them to table as hot as possible. .
A two-pan method: the giblets make a small aromatic sauce while the birds are half-roasted and finished in their own gravy. The wine and jelly go in at the very end and should only warm through.
- The hinge: do not stew wild duck to shredsCanvasback is very lean and its breast is best at medium-rare. If you follow this literally the legs will be right and the breast dry. Carve the breasts off after the half-roast, hold them aside, stew only the legs, wings and carcass, and return the sliced breast to the hot sauce for a minute before serving.
- "Half roast"The recipe gives no oven heat or timing. A hot oven, in the region of 425F for perhaps 10-12 minutes for a bird of two to three pounds, is enough to set the skin and render fat and throw off gravy without cooking through. Tip the pan and skim, as directed; wild duck fat is strong-flavoured.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manie: equal parts soft butter and flour kneaded together, about a tablespoon of each, dropped in to thicken as it melts. It is not the same as a cooked roux and should not be browned.
- A large glass of portIn period usage a wine glass is roughly two fluid ounces; what "large" adds is not specified anywhere, so read it as somewhat more. Add it with the pan off a hard boil and give it a few minutes to lose its raw edge.
- A glass of currant jellyMeasured by volume in the same glass — about a quarter cup of red currant jelly. It should dissolve into the sauce rather than sit on top; whisk it in off the heat.
- The lemon rindPared thin means zest only, no white pith, which turns bitter over a long simmer. Fish it out with the giblets before the small saucepan's gravy is poured over the ducks.
- Sourcing the birdCanvasback cannot be bought: migratory waterfowl may not be sold in the United States, and bag limits on this species have often been tight. A farmed Pekin or Muscovy duck works with the method, though it is fattier and needs harder skimming; a wild mallard is closer in flavour.
- YieldTwo canvasbacks, which is what this quantity of sauce suits, serve three to four. One farmed duck of four to five pounds serves the same number.
The canvasback was the most sought-after wild duck in nineteenth-century America, prized because birds wintering on the Chesapeake fed heavily on wild celery, which was believed to give the flesh a distinctive sweetness; Baltimore and Washington restaurants built menus around it and the birds commanded prices no other wildfowl could. That market demand, along with habitat loss, is generally credited with the collapse of the population by the early twentieth century, and the commercial sale of wild waterfowl was ended in the United States by federal law in that era. The port-and-currant-jelly finish here is straight out of the English game tradition, where a sweet-tart red sauce has long accompanied venison and wildfowl; the giblet sauce made separately and poured over at the last moment is the older, more laborious way of getting depth into a dish before stock cubes and commercial demi-glace existed. That a general household cookbook still carried a canvasback recipe says as much about the bird's fame as about how often the average reader could have cooked one.