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Wild Duck, Stuffing For
A good stuffing can be made for roast duck by soaking bread-crumbs in port, then seasoning them with cayenne and salt. A mixture of bread-crumbs and herbs, in which tarragon predominates, may be used; a little butter should be mixed in this.
Two stuffings sketched in outline, with no quantities given at all — the book assumes a cook who can judge by eye. The proportions below are a working starting point rather than a conversion of anything stated.
- Working quantitiesFor one wild duck, figure on about 1 cup fresh breadcrumbs. For the port version, moisten with 3-4 tablespoons port so the crumbs are damp and clumping but not sodden, then season with salt and a pinch of cayenne. For the herb version, work in 1 oz softened butter with roughly 2 tablespoons chopped tarragon and a little parsley or chervil.
- Breadcrumbs meant freshFor a stuffing like this the crumbs would have been grated or torn from a stale loaf; dried raspings were kept mainly for coating. Dried commercial crumbs will drink the port and go to paste.
- Tarragon should dominate, not monopoliseFrench tarragon is the one worth using; Russian tarragon has almost no anise character. Dried tarragon at about a third the volume works, but add it to the butter first so it rehydrates.
- Cook the stuffing separatelyWild duck is nearly always served pink, and the breast is ruined by the time a stuffing packed in the cavity reaches a safe 165F. Bake the stuffing in a small buttered dish alongside, or use it as a bed under the bird to catch the juices.
- If you do stuff the cavityThen the whole bird has to be cooked through, which means a well-done breast. Many modern recipes put aromatics — an onion half, an orange quarter, a bruised juniper berry — in the cavity instead and keep the stuffing outside.
- PortA ruby port is probably nearer the mark than a tawny, though the book says only "port". A tablespoon of the same port deglazed into the pan juices ties the stuffing to the gravy.
- YieldEnough for one duck, serving two. Wild ducks are small — a mallard dresses out around 2 lb, teal and widgeon considerably less — so scale by bird, not by weight.
Both versions here point away from the sage-and-onion stuffing of the domestic table, on the reasonable grounds that wild duck already carries a strong, faintly liverish, fishy-grassy flavour that sage compounds rather than balances. Port and cayenne belong to the same English tradition that served wild duck with a sharp, sweet, spiced sauce he port port, cayenne and lemon with game birds, and a similar mixture went into the tableside carving of a mallard. The tarragon variant is the French hand showing: tarragon butter is often said to have been a common partner to duck and game in nineteenth-century professional cooking, and Cassell's editors drew freely on French practice throughout. Wild duck in this period would have been a shot bird from a game dealer, hung for a few days, and considerably leaner and ranker than anything farmed.