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Duck Smothered with Sauerkraut
I YOUNG DUCK, JOINTED 6 SLICES BACON 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER PEPPER 6 SMALL SMOKED SAUSAGES 11/2 PINTS SAUERKRAUT Lightly brown duck and bacon in butter and take up. Heat sauerkraut in drippings left in pan. Arrange duck, bacon, sausages and sauerkraut in an earthenware pot or baking dish, so that meats are well embedded in sauerkraut, sprinkling in pepper to taste-no salt should be necessary. Cover closely, sealing cover with flour and water paste, and let all smother 2 hours or more, until duck is well done.
A bean-hole dish: the sealed pot goes into a pit of hardwood coals and cooks by residual heat, which is why the recipe gives a long window rather than a temperature. It adapts directly to a covered oven.
- Oven equivalentThe recipe gives no temperature, only a long window. A moderate oven, around 325F for 2 to 2 1/2 hours in a lidded Dutch oven or covered casserole, suits the instruction to cook until the duck is well done.
- Sealing the lidThe flour-and-water paste is a luting seal, not a flavour element: a stiff paste pressed around the rim, which bakes hard and traps the steam inside. In an oven, a tight lid or a sheet of foil crimped under it does the job.
- The duck"Young duck" suggests a duckling, typically in the 4 1/2 to 5 lb range, jointed into legs, thighs, wings and split breast. Modern ducks carry a great deal of fat -- brown them well, and if the pan looks very fatty pour some off before the sauerkraut goes in, though the recipe itself calls for heating the kraut in the drippings.
- QuantitiesA pint and a half of sauerkraut is 3 cups, roughly a pound drained -- a standard large jar. Drain it but do not rinse unless it is very sharp; the brine is the acid that cuts the duck fat.
- Sausages"Small smoked sausages" points to cured, smoked links of the kielbasa or knackwurst sort rather than fresh breakfast sausage. Use six short smoked links, added whole; if they are already cooked they need only to heat through.
- SaltThe note that no salt is necessary is accurate and worth heeding -- sauerkraut, bacon and smoked sausage together carry plenty. Taste only at the end.
- YieldServes four generously, five at a stretch. It reheats well, and the sauerkraut improves overnight.
Duck with sauerkraut is a Central European pairing -- Alsatian, Bohemian and German cooks all set fatty birds on cabbage that had been fermented in barrels through the winter, the acid of the kraut answering the richness of the duck. The flour-and-water seal is old kitchen practice, a luting paste that holds the steam in through a long, slow, unattended cooking.