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Salmi of Cold Wild Duck
Ingredients.
Wild Duck and the gravy left, or half pint of Stock.
One glass of Port Wine.
This entry gives only the ingredients; like much of the high-class repertoire, the method was assumed to be known by the cook. What follows is what the shorthand takes for granted.
- A glass of portIn late-Victorian kitchen usage a wine glass is about 2 fl oz, not a modern 6 oz pour. Half a pint by the imperial measure of the book is 10 fl oz, about 284 ml -- a good deal more than a US cup.
- The hinge: never let it boilA salmi is a way of reheating already-roasted game. The carved meat goes into the finished sauce and is brought only to a bare shiver of a simmer for a few minutes; boiling it drives the pink out of duck breast and turns it grey and stringy. Reduce and season the sauce first, then add the meat last.
- Use the carcassThe strength of a salmi comes from the bones. Chop the carcass and trimmings, brown them, and simmer them in the stock before straining — otherwise half a pint of stock and 2 oz of port will taste thin against the richness of the duck.
- The port needs cookingAdd the wine to the pan and reduce it by half before the stock goes in. Port stirred in at the end tastes raw and sweet rather than winey.
- "Wild duck" todayThe book means a mallard, teal or widgeon shot in season, birds much leaner and stronger-flavoured than farmed duck. Farmed mallard or a whole Pekin breast will work, but reduce any added fat; wild game contributes almost none. Wild-caught birds are subject to hunting and sale regulations in most countries.
- ThickeningA sauce of this kind was commonly bound with a brown roux or a spoonful of espagnole, though this entry names no thickener. A small beurre manié whisked in at the end, off the heat, gives the same gloss without a long-cooked base sauce.
- Yield and serviceOne wild duck is two modest entrée portions. Serve on fried bread croûtons with the sauce over, as the course was sent up in this style of dinner; redcurrant jelly stirred into the sauce is the usual period accompaniment.
Salmi is the English clipping of French salmis, a word generally traced to salmigondis, the old term for a hodgepodge or ragout of mixed meats. By the nineteenth century it had narrowed to one specific thing: roasted game — usually feathered game, and often already carved and cold from a previous dinner — cut up and finished in a strong, wine-sharpened brown sauce built from its own bones. That makes it a thrift dish dressed in a good coat, and one that belongs with the entrées rather than among the roasts. The entrée course in a formal Victorian menu came before the joint and was where the cook showed technique on small quantities, and a household that had served roast wild duck one day was expected to send up something worth eating from the remains the next. The pairing with port is of a piece with the period's taste in game cookery, where fortified wine and redcurrant jelly were the standard counterweights to a strong, dark, slightly fishy-tasting wild bird.