Sauce for Wild Duck
One tablespoonful of sugar, one tablespoonful of tomato catsup, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper.
A quick sweet-tart-spicy sauce — barely more than four ingredients — meant to cut the rich, gamy flavor of wild duck.
- A tiny batch — scale upAs written it makes just a few spoonfuls; multiply for a whole bird.
- “Tomato catsup”Ordinary ketchup does the job, lending body, sweetness, and a little acidity.
- Balance to tasteSugar for sweetness, lemon for sharpness, cayenne for heat — start light and adjust; the three should tug against each other.
- Why sweet-and-sour with gameStrong, lean wild duck has long been paired with tart-sweet sauces — currant jelly, orange, or here lemon and ketchup — to balance its intensity.
- Serve warmWarm the mixture through and spoon it over the carved duck. (Wild waterfowl can’t be bought; use farm-raised duck.)
Wild duck was prized game on 19th-century American tables, and none more than the canvasback, whose flavor once commanded luxury prices. New Orleans sat squarely on the Mississippi Flyway, the great migratory highway that funnels waterfowl down the continent each autumn, so wild ducks were a seasonal abundance in the Creole kitchen. Rich, dark game birds were classically served with a sharp, sweet sauce — jelly, orange, or a tart glaze like this one — to set the meat off rather than smother it.
From page 35 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
