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Duck, Braised, with Turnips
Prepare a duck as if for roasting. Line a small pan just large enough for the duck, with slices of bacon. Strew over the bottom a little parsley, chives, thyme, and lemon-peel. Lay in the duck, and add a carrot cut into strips, an onion stuck with three cloves, season with pepper, and cover with stock broth and a glass of white wine. Turn occasionally, and simmer an hour, or till done. Fry some slices of turnip in butter to a light brown, drain and add them to the stewpan, after removing the duck, which should be kept hot. When the turnips are tender remove them and strain the gravy, thickening if necessary with a little flour. Put the duck on a dish, pour the hot gravy over it, and garnish with the turnips. Fry the turnips eight or ten minutes. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward braise that assumes a few things a modern cook has to supply: pan size, heat level, and what to do with the duck fat that will inevitably render out.
- The hinge: a tight panThe instruction to use "a small pan just large enough for the duck" is the whole method. In a wide pan the liquid spreads thin, the duck sits half-dry, and the gravy reduces to nothing before the bird is cooked. A snug oval casserole or Dutch oven keeps the duck two-thirds submerged.
- "A glass of white wine"In Victorian cookery books this means a wine glass, usually reckoned at somewhere between 2 and 4 fl oz (60-120 ml) rather than a modern 6-8 oz pour. Dry white.
- Simmer, not boilAn hour at a bare simmer on the stovetop works, but the surface must only tremble; a rolling boil shreds the breast and clouds the gravy. Covered, in a low oven, is easier to hold steady and takes about the same time.
- Doneness"Till done" for a braised duck means the leg meat pulls easily from the bone, generally 60-90 minutes depending on size. A duck of roughly 4-5 lb should answer the four or five persons stated; a smaller bird may serve only three.
- Skim the fatDuck renders a great deal of fat, and the recipe never mentions it. Lift the duck, let the liquid settle a few minutes, and spoon the fat off before adding the turnips or the gravy will be greasy. Keep the fat for potatoes.
- The turnipsFry the slices in butter eight to ten minutes to colour them, then finish them in the braising liquid until a knife goes through without resistance, usually another 10-15 minutes. Young white turnips are sweeter; older ones can be bitter and are better blanched first.
- Thickening"A little flour" is best handled as a beurre manie, equal butter and flour kneaded together, whisked into the simmering strained gravy a pinch at a time. Raw flour stirred straight in will taste pasty.
- Bacon liningPeriod bacon was fatty and often green, that is unsmoked. Use streaky bacon or pancetta; heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the sauce.
Duck with turnips, canard aux navets, is a standard of French bourgeois cookery, and its appearance in Cassell's reflects how thoroughly late-Victorian English cookbooks absorbed French braising technique alongside their own roasts. The pairing is practical as well as traditional: turnips are winter-hardy and their slight bitterness and ability to absorb fat make them a natural foil to a bird as rich as duck, in much the same way turnips were used with mutton. The bacon-lined pan with herbs and a clove-stuck onion is the classic braisiere arrangement, where the fat and aromatics on the bottom protect the meat from scorching and build the sauce at the same time. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades, presumably addressed itself to households with a cook and a coal range, and it is tempting to read the vagueness of its heat instructions as a sign that the reader was expected to know what a simmer looked like — though that is inference rather than anything the book states.