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Teal, Roasted
Carefully pluck and draw the birds, and truss them like wild duck. Flour them well, and put them down before a brisk fire. Do not baste them for the first two or three minutes, as this will help to keep the gravy in; afterwards baste them liberally. When the birds are nicely browned, and the steam draws to the fire, they may be served. Put them on a hot dish, and serve with a little brown gravy round them; send a little more gravy to table in a tureen. Sprinkle a pinch of cayenne on the breast, and squeeze a little lemon-juice upon it at the moment of serving. Send a cut lemon to table with the birds. A very good hash may be made of the remains of teal. Time to roast, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, uncertain, teal being seldom offered for sale. Sufficient two for a dish.
This is spit-roasting written for an open range: the bird turns in front of a blazing fire, not inside a box. Translating it to an oven means going hot and fast and trusting the clock more than the colour.
- The hinge: do not overcookTeal is a small, lean, dark-fleshed duck and the breast is meant to come off the fire pink. Ten to fifteen minutes before a brisk fire corresponds to roughly 15 minutes in an oven at 450F for a bird of about 12 oz, and even a few minutes past that turns the breast dry and livery.
- "Before a brisk fire"The original cooks the birds in front of the coals, on a spit or jack, with something set beneath to catch the drippings for basting. In an oven, preheat to 450F and roast on a rack in a shallow tin; searing the breasts briefly in a hot pan first goes some way to replacing the radiant browning.
- "The steam draws to the fire"An old doneness cue: when steam rises visibly from the bird and drifts towards the heat, it is taken to be ready. It is not reliable in a closed oven. Use an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the breast instead, and take the bird off well before it reaches the temperature you would use for chicken.
- Flouring, and when to basteDredging with flour helps the skin colour and crisp. The instruction to leave the birds unbasted for the first few minutes is about not chilling the surface before the crust sets, rather than about "keeping the gravy in" — but the practical advice holds.
- Trussing and drawingSmall game birds such as woodcock and snipe were often cooked undrawn in the period, but ducks, teal included, were normally drawn as here. Trussing "like wild duck" means legs pressed close to the body and wings pinned, so the small carcass holds its shape and cooks evenly.
- SourcingThe "probable cost, uncertain" reflects a game market that scarcely existed in retail form. In the United States wild waterfowl cannot legally be sold, so teal come only from a hunter; in Britain and Europe wild teal may appear in season through game dealers. Wild-shot birds may carry shot -- check the breast before serving.
- GravyThe brown gravy appears to be a separate preparation rather than pan juices, since more of it is sent to table in a tureen. A stock-based brown gravy is the likely intention; the recipe gives no method.
- YieldTwo birds to a dish serves two people generously as a main course, or four as a small game course. The cayenne and lemon at the moment of serving are not garnish — the acid and heat cut the richness of the dark meat and should go on at the table.
The teal is the smallest of the European ducks, a bird of a pound or less, and Victorian cookery books treat it as one of the choicest items of the wildfowl season. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a later reissue of the Dictionary of Cookery generally traced to the mid-1870s, was written for households that might receive game as a gift from a shooting acquaintance rather than buy it — hence the frank admission that the cost is "uncertain, teal being seldom offered for sale." The treatment here, high heat, a bare quarter-hour, cayenne and lemon at the moment of serving, is the standard British handling of small wildfowl, and the closing note about a hash from the remains is characteristic of the book's assumption that nothing off a game bird is wasted.