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DUCK (a I'Italienne)
Cook a duck en braise (see DUCK, BRAISED, WITH TURNIPS). Put two large table-spoonfuls of oil into a stewpan, add a bunch of parsley, some chives and mushrooms, mince them very finely and stew for ten minutes, then thicken with flour, and pour in the gravy from the duck, and simmer for a few minutes longer. Skim and strain the whole, which ought to be rather thick, and send to table with the duck. Time to braise, three-quarters to one hour. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. to 4s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A braised duck with a herb-and-mushroom sauce built from its own braising liquor. The recipe assumes you have already braised the bird by the book's separate entry, so the working part here is the sauce.
- The braise comes firstCassell's cross-references its turnip braise, which would have the duck browned and then cooked in stock with aromatics in a covered pot. By modern practice a large duck usually needs longer than the stated three-quarters of an hour to an hour, which suits a small, young bird.
- Mince before you stewThe order of the sentence is misleading. Chop the parsley, chives and mushrooms finely first, then sweat them in the oil for ten minutes over low heat so they soften without colouring.
- Thicken with flourAbout a tablespoon of flour stirred into the softened herbs and cooked a minute or two before the liquid goes in, otherwise the sauce tastes raw. This is a rough roux made in the pan.
- The gravy from the duckDuck braising liquor carries a great deal of fat. Let it settle and skim it well before it goes into the sauce; the recipe's own instruction to skim at the end is the second line of defence.
- Straining discards the solidsAs written, the minced herbs and mushrooms are strained out and only their flavour remains. If you would rather keep the texture, skip the straining; the result is closer to a modern duxelles sauce.
- Two large tablespoonfulsVictorian tablespoon measures were not standardised and may have run larger than the modern 15 ml. Something in the region of 30-40 ml of a neutral oil suits the quantity of vegetables here.
- Cost and yieldThe 'probable cost' of 3s. 6d. to 4s. is for the dish as a whole, the duck being much the greater part of it. Four to five servings holds if the duck is carved for a table with other dishes.
Cassell's treated "a l'Italienne" as a name for a sauce rather than a claim about Italy: in the French repertoire codified through the nineteenth century, sauce italienne meant a brown or white sauce worked with finely chopped mushrooms and herbs, and dishes served with it took the label. The technique of chopping mushrooms to a fine mince and sweating them as a flavour base is the one known as duxelles, a name generally traced to La Varenne and the Marquis d'Uxelles in the seventeenth century and current through Careme, and it appears throughout English books of this period without that name. The cross-reference to the turnip braise is characteristic of the dictionary format, which assumed a cook would own the whole volume and work between entries rather than find a complete method on any single page.