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DUCK, DEVILLED (a la Francaise)
Divide a duck down the middle, prick the flesh all over with a skewer, and rub into it a mixture of mustard, pepper, salt, and chutney sauce, then broil or roast. Make a gravy of equal quantities of rich stock, white wine, ketchup, and lemon-pickle (two table-spoonfuls of each), add a little sugar, warm all together, and serve hot over the duck. Time, twenty to thirty minutes to broil.
A Victorian devil: a split duck rubbed with a hot paste, grilled, and served under a sharp made gravy. Two things need attention before you start — what "ketchup" and "lemon-pickle" meant in this book, and the fact that twenty to thirty minutes will not cook a raw duck through.
- Ketchup is not tomatoIn cookery of this period, unqualified "ketchup" usually meant mushroom or walnut ketchup: a thin, dark, salty condiment (some recipes for it include anchovy). Tomato ketchup would make the sauce sweet and thick, which is the opposite of the intent. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a mix of Worcestershire sauce and a little soy is the closest common substitute.
- Lemon-pickleA British and Anglo-Indian preserve of salted lemons with spice, used as a souring agent much as we would use preserved lemon. Finely chopped preserved lemon plus a squeeze of juice stands in for the two tablespoons called for.
- Chutney sauceProbably a bottled chutney sauce of the sort sold at the time, thinner than a jar of mango chutney today. Loosen a spoonful of mango chutney with vinegar and it will behave much as intended in the rub.
- The devil pasteNo quantities are given. For one duck, work with roughly 2 tbsp English or Dijon mustard, 1 tbsp chutney, 1 tsp cracked black pepper and a teaspoon of salt. Pricking the flesh is there to let the paste in and the fat out — do both sides and go through the skin on the breast.
- Time and donenessTwenty to thirty minutes suits a bird already cooked and being reheated over coals, and many devils were made that way, though this recipe also allows roasting from raw. Starting from raw, a split duck needs 45–60 minutes at 400F, and the legs and thighs want around 175F to be palatable. Judge by temperature, not the clock.
- Broiling means grillingOver a modern gas or charcoal grill, duck fat will drop and flare. Cook over indirect heat with the skin side up for most of the time, then finish skin-down briefly to crisp. Under an overhead broiler, keep it well back from the element or the mustard and the sugar in the chutney will scorch before the meat is done.
- The gravyTwo tablespoons each of stock, white wine, ketchup and lemon-pickle gives about half a cup — enough to moisten, not to pool. The instruction is to warm all together rather than boil; reducing this much salt and pickle would turn it harsh.
- YieldA split duck of 4–5 lb serves two generously, three at a stretch alongside potatoes and a sharp salad.
Devilling — coating meat in mustard, cayenne and pepper and browning it hard — was a Regency and Victorian answer to yesterday's roast, and duck, turkey legs, kidneys and bones were its usual subjects. The technique carries Anglo-Indian marks: chutney entered the British larder through trade with India, and lemon-pickle had been made in English kitchens since the eighteenth century; by the time Cassell's was compiled both were bottled goods a grocer might stock. The "à la Française" in the title sits oddly on a dish this English, but nineteenth-century cookery books used French tags freely to distinguish one version of a dish from another, and here it may signal the wine-and-stock gravy rather than any French origin. The habit of serving a devil late — at supper, or as a savoury after dinner — is often associated with gentlemen's clubs, where a plate of something fierce was thought to answer the effects of the evening.