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Duck, Stuffed
Bone a duck carefully, without breaking the skin. Boil the bones in a small quantity of water, and use the liquor for the gravy. Make a rich stuffing with half a pound of veal, half a pound of good suet, some parsley, chives, and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper, and make all into a paste with two well-beaten eggs and a little cream. Fill the inside of the duck, cook it en braise (see DUCK, BRAISED), and serve with a ragout of chestnuts prepared with the gravy from the bones. Time, about an hour. Sufficient for five or six persons. (See also DUCK, ROAST.)
A boned duck packed with a veal-and-suet forcemeat, braised rather than roasted, and served with chestnuts in the bone stock. The work is all in the boning and the forcemeat; the braise itself is unattended.
- Bone it from the back, or ask the butcherSplit the skin along the backbone, work the blade against the carcass and free the ribcage, then push the leg and wing bones out from inside so the skin stays whole. A butcher will do it if asked for a duck boned for stuffing, keeping the bones.
- The bone liquor is the whole sauceA small quantity of water means just enough to cover the chopped bones, an hour of simmering, then reduce. Brown the bones in a dry pan first; a pale duck stock will not carry the chestnuts.
- SuetHalf a pound of suet with half a pound of veal is a 50/50 fat-to-lean forcemeat, which is very rich by current taste. The text specifies only 'good suet'; beef suet, fresh from a butcher and grated cold, is the likeliest reading, and packaged shredded suet is dried and contains flour. Pork back fat or fatty pork shoulder substitutes readily, and cutting the suet to 4-6 oz gives a firmer, less greasy result.
- Chives, not scallionsThe trio of parsley, chives and mushrooms goes into the paste chopped fine. Chestnut or field mushrooms sweated dry first will stop the forcemeat going watery.
- Stuff loosely and sewThe eggs set the paste and it swells. Fill to about three-quarters, sew the back seam with butcher's twine and truss into a compact roll so it slices.
- Braising temperature and donenessSet the sealed duck on a bed of vegetables with the stock coming a third of the way up, cover, and hold at 325F. An hour is optimistic for a boned and stuffed bird of 4-5 lb: a veal forcemeat should reach 165F at the centre, which usually takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Judge by the thermometer, not the clock.
- Ragout of chestnutsPeeled chestnuts, fresh or vacuum-packed, simmered gently in the reduced bone gravy until tender but still whole, roughly 15-20 minutes. Vacuum-packed need less. Canned chestnut puree is not a substitute.
- ServingSufficient for five or six holds up. Rest the duck 15 minutes before slicing across the roll so each portion shows a cross-section of forcemeat.
Boning a bird whole and returning it to something like its original shape around a forcemeat is one of the set pieces of nineteenth-century professional cookery, and its presence in a domestic reference work like Cassell's may suggest something of how the mid-Victorian household regarded the standards of the hotel kitchen. The instruction to cook en braise rather than roast is often explained by the practical problem of a boned bird, which has no frame to hold it; braising both supports it and keeps the forcemeat moist. Chestnuts with duck and with poultry forcemeats is a long-established autumn pairing in French cookery, and the recipe's method of building the sauce from the discarded carcass is the ordinary thrift of a kitchen that would not have dreamed of throwing bones away.