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DUCKLING, BRAISED (a la Bourgogne)
Clean and truss the duckling. Fill it with a stuffing of mashed potatoes rubbed through a sieve, mixed with egg-yolk and powdered herbs, and well-seasoned with pepper. Line a pan with three or four slices of bacon, place on this a sliced carrot and six small button onions previously browned in a little butter over a hot fire. Add two thin slices of lemon and lay the duckling on top. Moisten with a glass of Burgundy, and put the pan into a hot oven for ten minutes to allow the duckling to get browned. Take the pan out, add a little more wine, and braise over the fire or in the oven until quite done. About ten minutes before it is done add a gill of brown sauce. Place the duckling on a hot dish, surrounded with the small onions. Boil up the sauce in the pan, strain it and remove the fat; season, reduce it to a proper consistency, pour some over the bird, and send the remainder to table in a sauce-boat. Probable cost, 5s.
A braise in the older French manner: the bird is browned hard, then cooked gently on a bed of bacon and aromatics in Burgundy. A few of the terms and quantities need translating before you start.
- The birdA duckling is a young duck, roughly 4-5 lb dressed, which serves three or four people. Modern Pekin ducks sold whole are close enough in size and fat content.
- Oven temperaturesThe "hot oven" for the initial ten-minute browning is usually read as about 425-450F. The braise that follows wants a gentle heat, around 325F; the recipe does not specify covering the pan, though braising normally implies it. Expect roughly 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 hours for a whole duckling.
- A gill and a glassA gill is 5 fl oz, a little over half a US cup. A "glass" of wine is less certain: a Victorian wineglassful is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, half a gill, though "a glass" for moistening a pan may well be more generous. Start with a few ounces and add more, as the recipe itself directs.
- Brown sauceThe book assumes a made brown sauce already prepared, of the kind given elsewhere in its own pages. A well-reduced dark veal or duck stock, or a good demi-glace, will stand in.
- The stuffingThe potatoes must be cooked and mashed before they go through the sieve, and the egg yolk binds them rather than cooks them into a custard. If you stuff the bird, the centre of the stuffing needs to reach 165F, which in practice means it finishes at the same time as the duck's thigh.
- DegreasingA duckling on a bacon-lined pan renders a great deal of fat, and the instruction to remove it is not optional. Let the strained liquid settle for a few minutes and skim, or the finished sauce will break and taste of nothing but fat.
- Reducing the sauce"A proper consistency" means it coats the back of a spoon. Season only after reducing, since the bacon and the reduced stock both concentrate salt.
- The lemonTwo thin slices cut the richness of duck and bacon. Take the pith-heavy end slices out before the long braise if you dislike bitterness in the sauce.
A la bourguignonne in nineteenth-century kitchens meant a garnish and braising medium drawn from Burgundy: red wine, bacon or salt pork, small glazed button onions, and sometimes mushrooms - the same set of components found in boeuf a la bourguignonne. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for British middle-class households in the later Victorian decades, ran through such French formulas systematically, giving each a "probable cost" so the expense could be judged before ordering from the poulterer; five shillings was a considerable outlay for a single dish. Duckling itself was a spring and early-summer luxury in Britain, with Aylesbury birds the best known.