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Roast Duckling
This is prepared and trussed similarly to goose, but not usually stuffed. Roast from 30 to 40 minutes. Green peas are the usual accompaniment to roast duckling. Serve with apple sauce which is made as follows: 1 pound cooking apples, 1 tablespoon Crisco, 1/2 cup water, and sugar. Peel, core, and slice the apples, cook them in a stewpan with water and Crisco, add a little sugar to taste. Stir well, or pass through a sieve.
A Crisco-era recipe that assumes you have already read the goose entry and know how to truss a bird. Two things need attention: the roasting time, which is far too short for a modern duck, and the shortening in the apple sauce.
- The timing is the problemThirty to forty minutes suits a genuine 8-to-10-week duckling of about 3 lb roasted very hot, and even then it leaves the legs underdone. A supermarket duck of 4-5 lb needs roughly 1 1/2 to 2 hours at 350F, or a high-heat finish after slower rendering, and should reach 165F in the breast and closer to 175F in the thigh.
- Duckling vs. duckIn the book's day a duckling was a distinct market bird, young and small. What you will buy today is a Pekin duck of 4-5 lb, generally fatter. Expect more rendered fat and a longer roast.
- Handle the fatThe recipe says nothing about it. Prick the skin over the breast and thighs, set the bird on a rack above the pan, and pour off the fat two or three times during roasting. Keep it; it is the best potato fat there is.
- Not stuffed, for a reason"But not usually stuffed" is sound advice. Stuffing inside a fatty duck absorbs grease and slows the heat reaching the thigh. Put a quartered onion and a bay leaf in the cavity instead.
- Crisco in the apple sauceThis book was written to sell shortening, which is why fat appears in a fruit sauce at all. One tablespoon of butter per pound of apples does the same job with better flavour; a neutral oil works if you want it dairy-free.
- Unmeasured sugar"And sugar" and "a little sugar to taste" are the whole instruction. Start with 1 to 2 tablespoons per pound and adjust once the apples have collapsed, since Bramleys need far more than Granny Smiths.
- Texture choice"Stir well, or pass through a sieve" is the difference between a rough sauce with visible pieces and a smooth purée. Sieving is worth it if the apples are fibrous; a few pulses with a masher is enough otherwise.
- YieldA 4-5 lb duck serves three, perhaps four with generous peas and potatoes. One pound of apples gives about 1 1/2 cups of sauce, which is plenty for that many.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which had reached the market only a few years earlier in 1911; that commercial purpose explains the tablespoon of shortening stirred into what is otherwise a plain English apple sauce. The pairing itself is much older than the book. Duck with apple, and goose with apple, are long-standing in English and northern European cooking, the sharp fruit cutting the richness of the bird, and green peas suggest a late-spring or early-summer dinner from the era when ducklings and the first peas came in together. The recipe's opening line, deferring to the goose entry for trussing, is a common habit of period cookbooks, which often assumed related entries would be read together.