Widgeon
It will not do to inquire too curiously into the food of all the animals we eat. It may be painful to reflect that the hogs of Montanches which yield the most superb hams are fed on vipers; that ducks dabble in the gutter; that woodcocks live on earthworms; that a whole family of snipes nourish themselves on Father long-legs; and that red mullets are caught where they find their victuals, beneath the mackerel shoals. But there is no fear of our being shocked by the diet of the widgeon. It is a nice little bird, which feeds wholly on the short sweet Wild Duck grass beloved by the goose. It is for this reason in Lapland called the grass-duck. The nature of its food is perfectly well ascertained; because, unlike its congeners the mallard or wild duck, the poachard and the teal, which feed by night, it feeds by day, and seems to have no great fear of the human race. It comes to us from the north in the end of September, and remains till the beginning of April.
As a rule it is understood that winged game should be underdone; but with regard to wild-fowl the rule is expressed in very strong terms-that the fowl should see the fire and no more. It is obvious that this fashion will not suit everybody's taste. Much or little, the widgeon is to be roasted before a brisk, bright fire, and to be sent to table with a crisp surface, with crusts or toast, and convoyed by a boatful of orange gravy sauce. Sometimes only the fillets are served, with the pinions attached. In this case they come to table piping hot in a bath of orange gravy.
WILD DUCK used to be called Mallard, but receives its present name out of respect for our friends of the horsepond, whose forefather it is supposed to be. As such, the wild duck is like nothing else that comes to our table, unless it be the rabbit of the warren and the wild boar. When we taste the tame duck of Rouen, or a rabbit of the hutch, we are tasting civilization : when we put the breast of the wild duck into our mouths, or a shoulder of the rabbit from the sand-burrow, we are embracing savage life and enjoying nature. Let the philosopher say which is best. In the case of the rabbit there can be no doubt: the wild coney is beyond the tame one. But the superiority of the wild duck over the civilised one is by no means established. A duckling with green peas is indeed one of the triumphs of civilisation; and none of your "flappers" (the name given to wild ducklings) can approach it. Still there Woodcock is an imposing minority who vote for wild duck-especially if it is of their own shooting. The worst of the wild duck, however, and its congeners, is that they are apt to have a fishy flavour; though where this flavour comes from it is difficult to say. The widgeon, for example, is known to feed wholly or almost wholly on grass; and yet it has often a strong fishy taste. It is to get rid of this grossness that wild fowl are sometimes stuffed with sage and onions and other high and mighty principles. On the whole, however, it has been discovered that stuffing is a useless excess. The only stuffing that may be allowed is plain crumb of bread well soaked in port or other red wine. Let the roasting of the duck be as rapid as his flight-before a brisk fire on a jack that revolves with quick music. Let him come up to table with a crisp, brown surface, suggesting hot haste; but inwardly-for the epicure he must be underdone. His sauce is orange gravy.
I have spoken of him the drake, who indeed fetches a higher price than the duck. But as a rule the duck is better.
Kettner gives method rather than measurements: a fierce fire, a very short roast, and orange gravy in a boat. The essential points are doneness, the sauce, and getting hold of the bird at all.
- The hinge: heat, not time"Before a brisk, bright fire" means the highest heat you have. The book gives no temperature, so any figure is a modern approximation: the hottest setting your oven offers, or a hot pan for breasts alone. The method depends on searing the outside before the lean flesh dries; a moderate oven will give you grey, tough meat with no crust.
- "See the fire and no more"This is the Victorian sporting standard for wild fowl and it is far rarer than most cooks now want. Duck breast is commonly taken to about 130-135F and rested; whole birds cooked to that point leave the leg meat raw and sinewy, which may be why the recipe also offers the option of serving only the fillets with the pinions attached.
- Wild birds and donenessPoultry-safety guidance is 165F throughout, and wild waterfowl can carry both bacterial contamination from the gut and, occasionally, avian influenza. If you are cooking a shot bird rather than a farmed one, that is the trade-off being made here; the risk is yours to weigh, and it is not the same as searing a supermarket duck breast.
- Sourcing a widgeonIn the United States, wild waterfowl cannot legally be bought or sold, so a widgeon must come from a hunter. In Britain wigeon is a quarry species with a defined open season and can be had from a game dealer in winter. Failing either, a wild mallard is the closest substitute; a farmed Pekin or Barbary duck breast will take the same treatment but is considerably fatter and has none of the character.
- Lead shotShot birds should be checked over before cooking and the shot channels trimmed. Lead shot for waterfowl is banned in the US and restricted in the UK, but older birds and older habits mean it still turns up.
- Orange gravyThis is the English counterpart of sauce bigarade: strong game or duck stock reduced with the juice and blanched shredded zest of a bitter Seville orange, seasoned sharply and sometimes lifted with port. Sweet orange alone makes it cloying -- add lemon juice or a little vinegar to compensate.
- Stuffing, if anyKettner allows only crumb of bread soaked in port or other red wine. Sage-and-onion stuffing in a bird cooked this fast will not cook through, and in a bird cooked long enough for the stuffing you have lost the point.
- The fishy tasteIt is generally held to concentrate in the fat and skin rather than the flesh, and to be worse in birds that have been feeding on the coast or on tidal water than on inland grass; Kettner himself admits the source is hard to pin down. Trimming the fat and skin from an offending bird does more than any amount of aromatics.
- YieldA widgeon is a small duck -- roughly 1.5 lb whole and well under a pound dressed -- and is one portion, or two if you are serving fillets only as part of a longer meal. A mallard will feed two.
- The jackThe "jack that revolves with quick music" is a mechanical spit -- clockwork, weight-driven or smoke-driven -- turning the bird before an open fire. A rotisserie attachment reproduces it; a very hot oven with the bird raised on a rack over a tray is the practical equivalent.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) took its name from Auguste Kettner's Soho restaurant and is generally attributed to the journalist E. S. Dallas, which explains why an alphabetical cookery reference reads like a series of dinner-table essays. The widgeon entry is characteristic: half natural history, half gastronomic argument, with the actual method compressed into two sentences at the end. Its claim about diet is broadly sound — wigeon are grazing ducks that feed heavily on eelgrass and short pasture, and the Scandinavian nickname the book reports as "grass-duck" reflects the same observation. That mattered to Victorian eaters because wild fowl were judged largely by what they had been eating, and a bird that grazed by day in open sight was thought cleaner-tasting than a night-feeding diver. The pairing with bitter orange was already old by 1877 and has stayed put: the sharp, faintly resinous Seville cuts the iron and fat of dark wild-duck meat in a way sweeter sauces cannot.