Clean and season a pair of wild ducks and cut into pieces at the joints. Heat 2 tablespoonfuls of butter in a saucepan; add the ducks, 1 large onion chopped fine, 2 cloves of garlic and 1 herb bouquet chopped. Cover and brown a few minutes; add 1 cup of water and stew until tender. Then add ½ can of mushrooms and 1 glass of claret and let simmer until done.
A straightforward brown fricassee of game birds. The main adjustments are units and the difference between wild ducks and what a butcher will sell you.
- The birdsA pair of wild ducks means two small birds — mallard runs about 2 to 2 1/2 lb, teal much less — so the pair together weigh roughly as much as, or less than, one supermarket duck. One 5 lb Pekin duck, jointed, substitutes reasonably, but trim the fat pad heavily and expect to pour off several tablespoons of rendered fat before adding liquid; wild birds are lean and will give up very little.
- Glass of claretClaret is red Bordeaux. "A glass" is an imprecise measure; the usual period reckoning for a wineglassful is about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup, though some cooks would have poured more. Figure a quarter to half a cup of dry red.
- Half a can of mushroomsCanned mushrooms of the era came in small tins; half of one is on the order of 4 oz drained. Half a pound of fresh mushrooms, browned separately in butter and added at the same stage, gives a better result — canned ones were a convenience, not a preference.
- Herb bouquetParsley, thyme and a bay leaf. The instruction to chop it is unusual; tied in a bundle it can be lifted out at the end, which is tidier.
- GarlicThe recipe says only "2 cloves," with no instruction as to how to treat them; the chopping applies to the onion and the bouquet. Left whole they perfume the pot mildly; crushed or minced they will dominate a dish this small — decide which you want before they go in.
- Timing and donenessWild duck legs need 45 minutes to an hour of gentle stewing to become tender; the breast pieces will be well past pink long before that and are best added for only the last 20 minutes if you want them anything other than firm. Cook to at least 165F throughout — wild waterfowl is not a candidate for rare service in a stew.
- The claret goes in lateAdding the wine at the end, after the meat is already tender, keeps its fruit forward rather than cooking it down to a background note. Give it 10 to 15 minutes uncovered to lose the raw edge and reduce the sauce.
- YieldTwo wild ducks serve two to three; a single large domestic duck serves four.
This is the kitchen-French formula for game birds: joint, brown in butter with onion and garlic, moisten, and stew until the sinew gives up. Claret — the English word generally traced to a medieval usage that first meant a light-coloured wine, before it settled on red Bordeaux — was the standard cooking red in Anglo-American kitchens of the period, and the recipe calls for "a glass" of it rather than a measured quantity. The canned mushrooms are one of the more telling details in it: commercially tinned mushrooms became cheap and widely stocked in American groceries around the turn of the twentieth century, and cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s reach for them freely in dishes that a French cook would have made with fresh. Wild duck itself was still ordinary market and household food in this era, before migratory-bird protection in the United States and Britain is generally said to have moved waterfowl firmly into the hands of licensed hunters.