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DUCK (a la Bearnoise)
Stew a duck in a little broth, half a glass of white wine, and a bunch of herbs (bouquet garni). Put into another stewpan seven or eight large onions cut in slices, and a bit of butter, put on the fire, and turn often till they get a good colour. Add a pinch of flour, moisten with the liquor the duck was stewed in. Stew the onions, and reduce the sauce; skim off the fat, and add a squeeze of lemon; pour it over the duck, and serve. Probable cost, 5s.
A braised duck with a heavy onion sauce, written in the telegraphic style Cassell's used for its French entries. The quantities are left to the cook, so the notes below fill in the gaps.
- The hinge: colour the onions properlyEverything the dish has comes from the onions, which must be cooked slowly to a deep tawny brown, not merely softened. Seven or eight large onions is roughly 2.5-3 lb sliced, and they will need 30-40 minutes over moderate heat with regular stirring.
- "Stew a duck"The text is a stovetop stew: braise the bird, covered, at a bare simmer for 1.5-2 hours until the leg meat pulls easily. A low oven (around 325F) will do the same job, though the book calls only for a stewpan on the fire, and browning the bird first is a modern addition rather than something the text asks for. A duck braised to tenderness will read well above 175F in the thigh, which is what this style of cooking wants.
- Half a glass of white wineVictorian cookery books usually reckon a wineglassful at about 2 fl oz, though usage varied, so half a glass is an ounce or so. The broth is unmeasured: use enough to come part of the way up the duck.
- A pinch of flourThis is understatement. For 3 lb of onions and the braising liquor you want about a tablespoon, cooked into the buttery onions for a minute before the liquid goes in.
- Skimming is not optionalA domestic duck renders a great deal of fat and the sauce will be inedibly greasy without it. Easiest to chill the strained liquor so the fat sets and lifts off, then reduce it over the onions.
- Bouquet garniParsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string, or bundled in a leek leaf. Remove before the sauce is finished.
- Yield and servingA 4-5 lb duck serves three, four at a stretch. Carve at the table and spoon the onion sauce over; boiled or steamed potatoes take up the sauce better than anything crisp.
- "Probable cost, 5s."A Cassell's convention, not an instruction. Five shillings was a substantial sum for a single dish in the later nineteenth century and marks this as company food.
The name is the interesting part. Despite the spelling, this has nothing to do with sauce béarnaise, the egg-yolk-and-butter emulsion traditionally credited to the Pavillon Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the 1830s and said to be named for the birthplace of Henri IV -- an attribution that rests on later tradition rather than contemporary record. What Cassell's gives is a duck smothered in browned onions, closer to the onion-heavy home cooking of the southwest of France, where duck and goose were the everyday fats and the everyday meats. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery collected hundreds of such short French entries alphabetically, often reduced to a paragraph and a price, on the assumption that a reader who wanted duck stewed with onions already knew how to stew a duck.