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Wild Duck, Fillets of, with Poivrade Sauce
Roast three or four wild ducks, and cut off the fillets according to the recipe already given (see WILD DUCK, FILLETS OF). Score the skin, dish the fillets in a circle, and pour over them a little poivrade sauce. Serve, and send additional sauce to table in a tureen (see POIVRADE SAUCE). Time to roast the ducks, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 4s. to 5s. per pair.
An assembly recipe rather than a from-scratch one: it assumes you have already roasted the birds and have poivrade sauce standing by. Both cross-references matter, and the roasting time is the part most likely to catch a modern cook out.
- Ten to fifteen minutes means a very hot ovenWild duck was roasted fast and hard, and ten to fifteen minutes only makes sense in a hot oven, on the order of 425-450F. At 350F the birds will be grey and dry before the time is up.
- The birds are meant to be rareWild duck breast is lean, dark and dries out past medium-rare; the short time is deliberate, not carelessness. Pull the birds when the breast reads about 130-135F and rest them before taking off the fillets.
- "Fillets" are the breastsEach bird gives two, so three or four ducks yield six to eight fillets — a first course for six, or a main for four. The legs are tough on a wild bird and are better braised separately than served here.
- What bird to buyThe Victorian market bird was usually mallard, sometimes teal or widgeon. Farmed mallard or a duck breast from a game dealer behaves the same way; a supermarket Pekin duck breast is much fattier and will want longer, gentler cooking to render the fat.
- Score the skin, and know whyShallow cuts through the skin only, not into the meat, help the fat run and give the sauce something to cling to. On a bird already roasted, scoring is mostly presentation.
- Poivrade sauceA classical brown sauce built on a mirepoix, vinegar or wine and a heavy hit of crushed peppercorns, strained and often finished with game trimmings. Add the pepper late and strain promptly — long boiling turns it bitter rather than hot.
- Cost and vessels4s. to 5s. per pair is a shilling price with no modern equivalent worth converting. A tureen is simply a warmed sauceboat with a lid; send more sauce than you think you need, since the dressed fillets take only a spoonful each.
- ShotWild-shot birds may still carry lead pellets and fragments. Feel through the fillets before slicing, and if the source is unknown treat any bird from the field as needing a check.
Poivrade is simply the French for a pepper sauce, from poivre, and in nineteenth-century professional kitchens it was a standard accompaniment to venison, hare and wild fowl — sharp with vinegar, dark with game stock, and deliberately aggressive so as to stand up to strong meat. Wild duck gets a long run of entries here: mallard and teal came to market in quantity through the autumn and winter shooting season, and were quoted by the pair. Breaking a roast bird down into neat fillets for a dressed dish, rather than sending it whole to table, was the treatment for an entrée of this kind, and the circle of fillets with sauce poured over is a characteristic arrangement of the period.