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WILD DUCK (a la Chasseur)
Truss the ducks by twisting each leg at the knuckle and resting the claws on each side of the breast, fixing them with a skewer run through the thighs, and pinions of the wings. Rub the liver over the breast, and roast underdone. Cut the breast into slices without detaching them, catching in a saucepan the gravy that escapes. Add a piece of glaze the size of a walnut, place on the fire, and when hot add four pats of butter, half a glass of port wine, a little coarsely-ground pepper, and the juice of half a lemon. Shake all over the fire, and, when the butter is melted, pour the sauce over, and serve when perfectly cold.
A hunter's treatment of roast wild duck, carved at the point of service with the escaping juices worked into a quick port-and-butter sauce. Everything depends on the bird being genuinely underdone, because the sauce is warmed rather than cooked.
- The hinge: roast fast and shortWild duck is lean and turns dry and livery if roasted through. The book gives no setting; by modern practice a very hot oven (around 450F) for roughly 15-20 minutes for a mallard (less for teal or widgeon) will leave the breast rosy. The sauce is then made separately in a pan on the stove, in a minute or two.
- "Serve when perfectly cold"This reads like a printer's slip: a butter-and-port sauce sets unpleasantly as it cools, and comparable game preparations are generally served hot. Most cooks will want to treat the final direction as "serve at once, very hot."
- GlazeVictorian glaze is meat stock reduced until it sets to a sticky brown jelly, the same idea as glace de viande. A walnut-sized piece is about a tablespoon; a teaspoon of concentrated veal or game stock reduction does the same work.
- Pats of butterA pat in this period is not standardised, but is usually taken as roughly half an ounce, so four pats is about 2 oz (55 g). The recipe has it shaken in over the fire until just melted, which keeps the sauce from splitting.
- Half a glass of portA wine glass of the era holds about 2 to 2.5 fl oz, so half a glass is roughly 1 to 1.25 fl oz, a couple of tablespoons. Ruby or tawny both work; anything sweeter will fight the lemon.
- Trussing and pinionsThe pinion is the wingtip joint. Bending the legs at the hock and skewering through thigh and wing simply holds the bird compact; modern trussing with string does the same and is easier to remove at the table.
- Rubbing with the liverThe raw liver is smeared over the breast so it bastes and browns into the skin. On a bird roasted underdone it may not be fully cooked, so treat it as you would any raw offal. If the bird arrives without giblets, a smear of chicken liver or plain butter substitutes.
- ShotShot birds frequently carry pellets in the breast. Run a finger over the meat before carving, and warn anyone at the table.
- YieldA mallard serves two at most; teal and other small ducks are one bird per person. Scale the sauce accordingly.
A la chasseur means simply "hunter's style," a label attached in French cookery to quick pan preparations built from whatever came off the roast or out of the bag. In this version the bird is deliberately underdone and then finished with its own juices, glaze, wine and lemon. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was compiled for households that still saw wild duck as a seasonal arrival rather than a purchase, and the recipe assumes something now uncommon: a larder stocked with homemade meat glaze. The sharpness of lemon and coarse pepper against port is characteristic of the period's game sauces, which leaned on acidity and spirit to cut the strong, iron-edged flavour of wild fowl.