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Canvas-Back Ducks, Roasted
Procure two fine fat canvas-back ducks; pick, singe, draw, and wipe carefully; throw a light pinch of salt inside, run in the head from the end of the neck to the back, truss nicely, and place in a roasting pan. Sprinkle a little salt over, put them in a brisk oven, and let them cook for eighteen to twenty minutes. Arrange on a very hot dish, untruss, throw two table-spoonfuls of white broth into each duck, and serve with slices of fried hominy and currant jelly. Price uncertain.
A market-game recipe from the era when wild duck was sold by the brace and served frankly rare. Almost everything here transfers to a domestic duck except the bird itself and the cooking time.
- The bird you cannot buyCanvasback is a wild migratory duck; since the Migratory Bird Treaty Act its commercial sale has been prohibited in the United States, and it is available only to licensed hunters within season limits. Any modern version of this dish is made with farmed duck or, at most, legally taken wild waterfowl given to you by a hunter.
- "A brisk oven"Read this as 425-450F. The whole method depends on very high heat and a very short stay, which is how a lean wild duck was cooked rare through with a browned skin.
- Eighteen to twenty minutes is for a wild birdA canvasback is small and almost fatless, so it cooks in the time given and comes out red at the breastbone. A 4-5 lb Pekin duck is heavier and much fattier and needs roughly an hour and a half at moderate heat; treating it like a canvasback will give you raw meat under unrendered fat.
- DonenessThe nineteenth-century standard for wild duck was rare to the point of bloody. Current food-safety guidance for all poultry, wild or farmed, is 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, which is a different dish from the one described here. Decide which you are making before the bird goes in.
- Trussing with the head on"Run in the head from the end of the neck to the back" appears to mean skewering the head back along the bird for presentation, a convention sometimes used with game birds. Skip it; truss with string and leave the neck skin folded under.
- White brothA pale unbrowned stock of veal or chicken bones. Two tablespoons poured into the cavity of each bird at serving loosens the juices into a thin natural gravy; a light chicken stock does the job.
- Fried hominyHominy grits cooked stiff, spread in a pan to set overnight, cut into slices or squares and fried in butter or fat until crisp. Not the whole tinned hominy kernels sold today, though those can be pan-fried as well.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly, tart rather than sweet, was a common nineteenth-century accompaniment to game birds. Cranberry sauce is not a substitute for it here.
- "Price uncertain" and yieldThe compilers normally gave a cost; canvasback prices presumably varied with the season and the market, which may be why the price is left open here. Two ducks of this size would serve two generously or four modestly.
The canvasback's reputation rested entirely on its diet: birds wintering on the Chesapeake and the Susquehanna flats fed on the roots of wild celery (Vallisneria americana), and the resulting flesh was held to be the finest of any American wild duck, commanding prices that put it alongside terrapin on gilded-age menus. That prestige is why a cookery reference bothered to include it, and why the compilers had to admit the price was uncertain -- the bird reached British and eastern American tables through a market-hunting trade whose supply swung with the flyway and the weather. Punt guns and commercial shooting cut the population hard, and the ban on selling migratory game birds in the early twentieth century ended the traffic; the wild celery beds themselves later declined with the bay. The rare, brief roast and the currant jelly, however, remained a common template for wild duck served afterwards.