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Widgeon, Hashed
Cut the best parts of the widgeons into neat pieces. Place them on a dish, cover them over, and place them in a cool pantry till wanted. Put the carcases and trimmings of the birds into a small saucepan with the remains of the gravy that was served with them, or, failing this, with a little broth or water. Let them simmer gently till the liquor is strong and good, then rub the gravy, with the little pieces of meat that have fallen from the bones, through a sieve. Add a wine-glassful of sherry to the sauce, and put it back into the saucepan with the pieces that were put aside. Let these simmer gently till they are warmed through. Of, course, they must not be allowed to boil. Arrange them on toast upon a hot dish, pour the gravy over, and serve. Time, about half an hour to simmer the pieces.
This is a second-day dish: it assumes you roasted widgeon yesterday and still have the carcases and a jug of gravy. The whole method turns on gentle heat, since the meat is already cooked.
- The hinge: never let it boilWild duck is lean and dark, and the breast meat is already cooked through from roasting. Bring the sauce to a bare shiver, drop in the sliced meat, and hold it just below a simmer until warmed through. A boil will squeeze it grey and tough in under a minute.
- Half an hour is far too longThe recipe says 'about half an hour to simmer the pieces,' but the meat is already cooked; pieces of cooked duck need only three to five minutes in hot sauce, and thirty will give you shoe leather. Reheat leftover poultry to 165F/74C and serve it straight away.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books this is roughly 2 fl oz (60 ml), not a modern 6 oz pour. Add it to the strained gravy and let it cook a moment before the meat goes in, or the sauce tastes raw and spirituous.
- Widgeon, and what to use insteadWidgeon is a wild dabbling duck, smaller and leaner than a mallard, sold by game dealers in season. Two dressed birds yield surprisingly little meat, mostly breast. Leftover roast mallard, teal or a rare-cooked domestic duck breast all behave the same way here.
- The carcase stockCracking the bones before they go in the pan gives a stronger liquor. Simmer twenty to thirty minutes with the old gravy topped up with a little unsalted stock or water, then press it through a sieve; the scraps of meat that fall from the bones are what thicken and flavour the sauce.
- The cool pantryRead this as the refrigerator. A covered dish in a cold larder was the best they had, and cooked game should not be left standing at room temperature.
- Seasoning and finishOld gravy is often already salted, so taste after reducing rather than before. A grind of pepper, a squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of redcurrant jelly stirred into the strained sauce suits the strong flavour of wild duck.
- YieldTwo widgeon hashed this way will serve two people generously or three modestly, on thick fingers of dry toast set on a warmed dish so the sauce does not chill on contact.
Hashes like this one are the working end of a Victorian kitchen: a roast of game came to table whole on the first day and returned, carved and sauced on toast, at breakfast or luncheon on the second. The technique of building a quick sauce from bones, trimmings and yesterday's gravy recurs throughout the period's cookery books. Widgeon (Mareca penelope in Europe, the American wigeon its close relative) was a familiar poulterer's bird through the game season. The name is generally traced through Old French to a Latin root for a small crane or waterbird, though the etymology is traditional rather than settled. Sherry rather than claret is one of several wines the period's cooks used with dark game meat.