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DUCK (a la Mode)
Take a couple of ducks, divide them into quarters, and lay them in a stewpan with a sprinkling of flour, pepper, and salt. Put a large lump of butter divided into pieces at the bottom of the stewpan, and fry the ducks until they are a nice light brown colour. Remove the frying fat, and pour in half a pint of gravy, and a glass of port; sprinkle more flour and add a bunch of sweet herbs, two or three shallots minced fine, an anchovy, and a little cayenne. When the ducks have been stewing in the gravy for about twenty minutes, if the stewpan has been tightly closed, they will be found done enough. Put the ducks on a dish, take out the herbs, clear off any fat, and serve with the sauce poured over them. Probable cost, 7s. 6d. per couple. Sufficient, a couple of ducks for six or seven persons.
A straightforward brown stew of jointed duck, thickened with flour and sharpened with port and anchovy. The only real problem is the cooking time, which suited the smaller, younger birds of the period and will not do for a modern duck.
- Twenty minutes is not enoughA modern Pekin or Aylesbury duck quartered will still be tough at twenty minutes; legs and thighs want 45 to 60 minutes of gentle stewing to become tender. If you want the breast pink, brown it with the rest, remove it after browning, and return it to the pan for the last few minutes.
- Render before you stewDuck skin carries a great deal of fat. Score or prick it, brown the pieces skin-side down over moderate heat until a good deal of fat has run out, then pour it off. The instruction to "remove the frying fat" is doing more work here than the added "large lump of butter" suggests -- you will likely need no butter at all.
- Half a pint of gravyAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, a generous cup and a quarter. "Gravy" in Cassell's means unthickened brown stock, not the finished sauce of a Sunday roast; use a good duck or chicken stock. For a full braise of duck legs you will want closer to a pint so the pieces are half submerged.
- A glass of portA wine glass used as a kitchen measure in this period was usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the term was loose and glasses varied. Use a ruby port rather than tawny; the sauce wants fruit and colour, not nuttiness.
- The anchovyOne salted or oil-packed fillet, chopped and worked into the sauce until it dissolves. It reads oddly but functions as seasoning, not flavour -- it should not be identifiable in the finished dish. About a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or a scant teaspoon of fish sauce, does the same job.
- Sweet herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out as directed. Tie it to the pan handle with string and removal is trivial.
- ThickeningFlour is added twice, once at the browning and once into the liquid. Add the second sprinkling to the fat in the pan and cook it a minute before the stock goes in, or you will get lumps and a raw-flour taste.
- YieldSix or seven from two ducks is optimistic by modern standards; two 4 to 5 lb birds will serve four to six comfortably with potatoes and a green vegetable.
- The cost note7s. 6d. per couple is Victorian retail pricing, included because Cassell's costed nearly every dish for the household budget. It has no bearing on the cooking.
A la mode simply meant "in the fashion" -- by the nineteenth century it had settled into English cookbooks as a label for meat braised in a rich, wine-darkened gravy, as in boeuf a la mode. The port-and-anchovy combination here is thoroughly of its time: anchovy, whether as a whole fish, as essence, or in one of the bottled sauces that filled Victorian larders, was a common savoury deepener in English brown sauces, and port was much used for dark meat and game. Cassell's cookery dictionaries were published in London in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and arranged alphabetically as reference works for middle-class households, which is why the recipe entries generally carry a probable cost and a note on how many the dish will feed. Duck sat at the upper edge of everyday poultry -- more expensive than a fowl, cheaper than game -- and the book gives it many treatments, of which this stew is among the plainest.