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Wild Duck
Notwithstanding the slightly fishy flavour of the flesh, wild duck is highly esteemed by epicures. It is trussed like a tame duck, with the feet left on and turned close to the body. It is often said that a wild duck should be allowed only to fly through a hot kitchen before it is sent to table; and though this is scarcely the case, still the bird is considered to be in perfection only when it is crisp and brown on the surface, and so much underdone that when it is cut the gravy flows into the dish. Usually the breast of the bird is the only part cared for. A wild duck should be roasted before a brisk fire, and it should be basted constantly. The duck is to be preferred to the drake, though the latter often fetches the higher price.
This is a method entry rather than a numbered recipe: it sets out how the Victorian kitchen handled a mallard and what the result should look like. The instructions that matter are high heat, constant basting, and a short cooking time.
- "A brisk fire" is 450F"A brisk fire" -- The bird was spitted before an open fire, which is fierce, dry radiant heat. The book gives no oven setting; a hot oven of about 450F, with the duck on a rack over a tray so the fat drains away and the skin crisps, is a reasonable modern equivalent.
- Actual timingA mallard at that heat takes roughly 15-20 minutes; teal and widgeon, being much smaller, take 10-12. The book's "so much underdone that the gravy flows" corresponds to a breast pulled at about 130-135F, which is how duck breast is still cooked today.
- Basting is not optionalWild duck has almost no subcutaneous fat compared with a farmed bird, so there is nothing to self-baste with. Butter, or a barding of fat bacon over the breast for the first half of the cooking, is what keeps it from drying out.
- The feet left onVictorian game presentation kept the feet, scalded and scraped, turned back against the body. It has no effect on the cooking and can be ignored, though the legs and thighs of a wild duck are worth cooking longer than the breast.
- The "fishy flavour"This depends entirely on what the bird has been eating. Dabbling ducks feeding on grain and weed taste clean; diving and sea ducks such as scaup, scoter and merganser can be strongly fishy. One remedy suggested in period books was a scald with boiling water and an onion or a peeled orange in the cavity while roasting.
- ShotAny wild-shot bird may contain pellets, and lead shot for waterfowl is now prohibited in many jurisdictions, chiefly on account of lead poisoning in wildlife. Feel along the breast before carving, and warn anyone at the table.
- SourcingWild duck cannot be sold commercially in the United States; it comes from a licensed hunter or not at all. In the UK and much of Europe it is available in season from game dealers. Farmed mallard is the practical substitute and behaves similarly, though it carries more fat.
- Yield and serviceOne mallard serves two; a teal serves one. The period accompaniments were a sharp gravy with port and lemon or Seville orange, cayenne, and watercress or a plain salad.
Cassell's is writing at a time when wildfowl came to town in quantity through the game markets, Leadenhall chief among them, and when the distinction between a fen-fed mallard and a fishy sea duck was something a cook or a buyer was expected to judge for herself. The quip about letting the bird fly through a hot kitchen is a stock joke of English sporting writing, often said to have circulated in nineteenth-century cookery books to make the point that wildfowl is ruined by long cooking; the book cites it and then sensibly corrects it. The preference for the duck over the drake, despite the drake often fetching the higher price at market, is the sort of trade knowledge these dictionaries existed to pass on. It also reflects a broader Victorian habit of treating game as a category apart from poultry: served rare, dressed with sharp and acid sauces rather than sage and onion, and valued precisely for the strong flavour that domestic breeding had bred out of the farmyard bird.