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Ragout of Duck
2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 ozs.) butter I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour 1 pint (2 cups) stock 3 shallots A few sprigs of parsley 1 teaspoonful lemon juice Salt and pepper 1 teaspoonful red currant jelly ½ teaspoonful meat extract Few drops kitchen bouquet Cut the duck into neat joints. Melt the butter in an earthenware pan, toss the pieces of duck in it, then sprinkle in the flour, and fry it a light brown color; then add the stock, stirring it in smoothly. Add the parsley, lemon juice, shallots, jelly, kitchen bouquet, and meat extract.
Put on the lid and let it simmer for thirty minutes. Season it nicely. Pin a napkin round the casserole and serve it hot. 4 squabs I onion
A straightforward brown ragout built on a butter-and-flour roux, written for an earthenware casserole set over direct heat. Two things need attention before you start: the ingredient list omits the duck itself, and the stray "4 squabs 1 onion" at the end is the opening of the next recipe, not part of this one.
- Quantity of duckAssume one duck of about 4-5 lb, jointed into eight pieces, which suits the pint of stock and the 2 oz of butter. The original list simply forgets to name it.
- Flameproof vesselAn "earthenware pan" in a book of this kind is a glazed casserole intended to be set over direct heat, as the instruction to melt butter and fry the flour in it implies. Much modern earthenware and stoneware is not flameproof and may crack on a burner; a Dutch oven or enamelled cast iron is safer, with the heat kept moderate.
- Thirty minutes is not enoughDuck legs and thighs need 1 to 1½ hours of gentle simmering before the connective tissue gives way. Brown all the joints, then simmer the legs the full time and add the breast pieces for only the last 15 minutes so they do not turn grey and stringy.
- Meat extract and kitchen bouquetMeat extract is concentrated beef extract of the Bovril or Liebig type; it carries a good deal of salt, so season at the end as instructed. Kitchen Bouquet is still sold as a caramel-and-vegetable browning liquid; a few drops is genuinely all that is wanted, or leave it out if your roux is properly browned.
- ShallotsThe recipe does not say how the three shallots are to be prepared. Left whole they will barely flavour the sauce in half an hour; slice or finely chop them and soften them in the butter with the duck before the flour goes in.
- Red currant jellyOne teaspoonful is a seasoning, not a glaze: it rounds the acidity of the lemon juice and the saltiness of the extract. Any tart jelly works, but avoid sweetened cranberry sauce, which will push the sauce toward candy.
- Finishing the sauceDuck throws a good deal of fat. Skim the surface before serving, or chill and lift the cap if you make it a day ahead, which improves it.
- Yield and serviceServes three to four, on the assumption of one bird. Pinning a napkin round the casserole is period table dress for a dish brought to table in its cooking pot; it does nothing for the food.
Ragout is simply the French rago tt, from rago tter, to revive the appetite, and by the Edwardian period it had long since become an English kitchen word for any brown stew of cut-up meat in a thickened sauce. What dates this version is the pantry it assumes: bottled meat extract and Kitchen Bouquet, both products of the late nineteenth-century trade in concentrated flavourings, doing work that a long-simmered stock once did. The casserole-cookery books of this era, of which this is one, were promoting a then-fashionable idea, that a single glazed earthenware pot could go from burner to table. Red currant jelly with duck and game is an older English habit, generally traced to the standing partnership of sharp fruit and rich dark poultry.