Roast Duck
Ducks are dressed and stuffed in the same manner as above. Young ducks should roast from twenty-five to thirty minutes; fullgrown for an hour or more with frequent basting. Some prefer them underdone, served very hot, but thorough cooking will prove more generally palatable. Serve with currant jelly, apple sauce, and green pease. If old, parboil before roasting.
Place the remains of a cold roast duck in a stew-pan with a pint of gravy and a little sage, cover closely, and let it simmer for half an hour; add a pint of boiled green pease, stew a few minutes, remove to a dish, and pour over it the gravy and pease.
A game-section entry that assumes a wild duck plucked and stuffed like the roast goose above it, plus a second recipe tucked onto the end for the cold leftovers. The two halves want different handling.
- Which duck you have decides everythingTwenty-five to thirty minutes suits only a small, lean bird roasted hard and fast in a hot oven, where the breast comes out pink; the book gives no temperature. A supermarket Pekin or Moulard is far fatter and needs a long slower roast, 325-350F, until the thigh reaches 175F and the fat has rendered out.
- "Underdone" and modern donenessWild duck breast is conventionally served at 130-135F, which may be close to what the writer means by underdone. Farmed duck is usually taken further because the fat and connective tissue in the legs need time; whole-bird cooking is a compromise, which is why many cooks now separate breast from legs.
- "Dressed and stuffed in the same manner as above"The preceding roast method is meant: bird plucked and drawn, cavity filled with stuffing, and the sage in the leftover dish suggests a sage-and-onion bread stuffing. Lean, strong-flavoured ducks take this poorly, and many cooks now use onion, apple or orange in the cavity purely as aromatics and discard it rather than eat it as stuffing.
- Green peaseSimply green peas. Frozen peas are closer to the intended fresh-shelled article than tinned, and want two or three minutes at most.
- A pint of gravyAbout two cups of duck or brown stock, or the strained pan juices let down with stock. Modern canned broth is saltier than nineteenth-century gravy, so reduce by half and taste before adding more.
- Parboiling an old birdThe recipe says only to parboil an old bird before roasting; no time is given. Braising the legs and roasting only the breast does the same job better, and avoids the washed-out flavour parboiling leaves behind.
- Basting and rendered fatFrequent basting matters for a lean wild bird. A fatty farmed duck needs no basting at all; prick the skin instead and pour off the rendered fat as it collects, saving it for potatoes.
- The leftover stewHalf an hour of simmering will make already-cooked duck stringy. Warm the carved meat through in the sage gravy for five to ten minutes, add the peas at the end, and serve at once.
- YieldA wild mallard serves one or two; a 5 lb farmed duck serves three or four. The currant jelly and apple sauce are both traditional cuts against the richness, and one or the other is enough.
Buckeye Cookery came out of Ohio in 1877, at a moment when wild duck was still an everyday market item rather than a luxury: canvasback, mallard and teal were shot commercially and sold in city markets. Market hunting on that scale was ended by federal law in the early twentieth century, and wild duck now reaches most tables only through a hunter. The pairing with currant jelly is a common nineteenth-century treatment for dark game, and the closing paragraph on the cold remains is typical of the book's temperament, where the second day's dinner is built into the first recipe rather than left to chance.