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Braised Duck with Turnips
Wash and cut 2 carrots, 2 stalks celery, 2 turnips, 1 onion in large pieces, put them in pan on these place 4 slices ham, then 1 duck trussed for roasting, 1 bunch parsley, 2 cups water, dust nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Lay Criscoed paper over top, then lid, and simmer 1 hour or till duck is tender. Melt 3 tablespoons Crisco in a pan, add 1 dozen small peeled turnips and toss till they are golden color. When duck is cooked, remove strings and skewers. Put on hot dish, and arrange turnips round. Season gravy and strain over duck.
A stovetop braise in the French manner, written for a 1910s kitchen and for a brand-new hydrogenated shortening. The method is sound; the timing and the fat need attention.
- CriscoCrisco is vegetable shortening, and this book was written to promote it. Butter, or better still the duck's own rendered fat, does the same job with more flavour.
- Criscoed paperA round of greased parchment pressed down onto the food — a cartouche. It holds moisture against the bird under the lid, so the exposed breast does not dry out. Worth doing rather than skipping.
- One hour is optimisticA whole duck of 4-5 lb simmered in two cups of liquid will not be tender in an hour; expect 90 minutes to 2 hours, and go by the leg joint moving freely rather than the clock. The recipe's own "or till duck is tender" is the real instruction.
- Brown the bird firstThe original puts a raw trussed duck straight onto the vegetables. Colouring it in a hot pan before it goes in gives a far better gravy and starts the fat rendering.
- Degrease the gravyA duck will throw off a great deal of fat into two cups of water. Strain, let it settle a minute, and spoon off the fat before seasoning, or the sauce is unpleasant. Reduce it hard if it tastes thin.
- SaltFour slices of ham underneath the bird season the whole braise. Salt at the very end, after the gravy has been strained and reduced, not at the start.
- The turnipsTwelve small turnips tossed in fat until golden are being glazed, not cooked through — finish them by spooning over a little of the braising liquid and letting them soften, or add them to the pan for the last 20 minutes.
- YieldServes three to four. "Dust nutmeg" is a pinch, no more; "1 bunch parsley" means stalks and all, removed with the strained gravy.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre of cookbook published by manufacturers rather than authors — in this case a shortening maker, which is why Crisco appears in a French braise where a period French cook would have used butter, lard or the duck's own fat. The dish itself is canard aux navets, one of the standard bourgeois treatments of duck: the turnips are there to cut richness, and browning them separately in fat before they meet the bird is the usual practice, since turnips simply stewed in duck stock turn watery and grey. The ham slices and cut root vegetables under the duck form a bed of the kind used when lining a braising pan, keeping the bird off the pan floor while it flavours its own gravy.