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Widgeon, Roasted
Rub the breast of the widgeon with the liver till it is red. Truss it securely, and put it down before a clear fire. Flour it, and baste frequently till done. Serve on toast in a dish, and send the gravy to table with it. It is generally preferred that a widgeon should be undercooked. If liked, it may be stuffed with the liver pounded and mixed with bread-crumbs, a little pepper, salt, and grated lemon-rind, bound together with the yolk of an egg. Time to roast the widgeon, a quarter of an hour; if liked well done, twenty to twenty-five minutes. Probable cost, 1s. each. Sufficient, two for a dish.
A spit-roasting recipe for a small wild duck, written for a household that still cooked in front of an open fire. The method translates to a very hot oven, and the whole point of the dish is speed.
- The hinge: heat and hasteWigeon has almost no fat and dries out if it is cooked slowly. Take the bird out of the refrigerator an hour ahead and get the oven to its top setting. The original gives a quarter of an hour, and extends that to twenty to twenty-five minutes only for those who like it well done.
- Before a clear fireThis means a bird hung or spitted in front of an unsmoking, well-burnt-down fire with a dripping pan beneath. In an oven, roast on a rack in a shallow tin near the top; the flouring and basting are there to build a crisp, browned surface, which is what the radiant fire did on its own.
- "Flour it"Dredging with flour and then basting over it was a common way to raise a crust or 'froth' on roasting game; this recipe flours the bird as it goes down to the fire. A light dusting only, or it turns pasty.
- The liver rubSmearing raw liver over the breast stains it dark and adds a faint offal savour; it is cosmetic more than anything. It cooks in place during roasting, so there is no issue with it, but skip it if the giblets did not come with the bird.
- The optional stuffingRaw pounded liver bound with egg yolk will not come to a safe temperature inside a bird roasted rare for fifteen minutes. Cook that mixture separately as a forcemeat or a small quenelle and serve it alongside, or leave it out.
- Size and yieldA wigeon dresses to roughly a pound, sometimes a little more, smaller than a mallard and much smaller than a farmed duck. The original's 'sufficient, two for a dish' suggests about one bird per person, or half a bird each as part of a larger game course.
- Gravy and toastThe gravy is the pan drippings deglazed and seasoned, not a thickened sauce; it is sent separately in a boat. The toast sits under the bird to catch the juices and is meant to be eaten.
- Cost"1s. each" is one shilling per bird, a Victorian price with no useful modern equivalent. Wigeon today is a seasonal game-dealer item where wildfowling is legal, and shot birds may carry pellets.
The wigeon (Mareca penelope, long catalogued as Anas penelope) is a small dabbling duck that winters in large flocks on estuaries and flooded grassland, and it grazes rather than diving; cooks rated it highly among wildfowl, though the exact ranking against teal and mallard varied from writer to writer. Wildfowl arrived from the marshes of Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Essex in quantity through the winter months, and a Victorian kitchen of any pretension expected to see whatever the game dealer had that week. The insistence that the bird be "undercooked" is worth noting: at a period when most poultry was roasted through, wildfowl was the recognised exception, served rare and bloody at the breast, and it is still generally served rare today. The liver rub and the liver-and-crumb stuffing reflect the common habit of using the giblets of a small bird rather than discarding them.