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Braised Wild Duck
Chop fine one head of celery, a bunch of parsley, one small onion, a piece of garlic, one cup of sage, a pinch of mace and red pepper, salt to suit. Beat yolk of one egg and bind stuffing, adding also a heaping teaspoon of soft butter. Fill ducks, sew up opening, put in braising pan with cover, adding a little onion, garlic, parsley and celery cut fine, a bay leaf, two tablespoons of cider vinegar, a small glass of white wine, pinch of sage, red pepper and salt, five tablespoons of butter and a pint of good stock. Cover tightly and put in medium oven, cooking one hour. Mix with cold water two tablespoons of browned flour and stir in one-quarter cup of capers. Cover and cook slowly for half an hour or more; beat to a paste with a teaspoon of butter the yolks of three hardboiled eggs, a pinch of salt and red pepper. Form into small balls. Put the ducks on large squares of toast. Put egg balls around and pour sauce over all.
A braise built on old hotel-kitchen habits: a bound forcemeat stuffing, a heavily buttered braising liquor, browned flour to thicken, and hard-boiled egg balls as garnish. Two of its measurements need judgment before you start.
- The cup of sageA full cup of dried rubbed sage would be inedible in a single stuffing. One possibility is that the line assumes a cup of sage dressing or seasoned breadcrumbs, which the recipe otherwise lacks entirely — there is nothing here for the egg yolk and butter to bind; another is simple misprinting of a smaller quantity. Either way, read it as about a cup of soft breadcrumbs with a teaspoon or two of chopped sage, and treat the stuffing as loose and aromatic rather than a solid mass.
- Medium oven350F. The duck goes in covered with a pint of stock, so it is a true braise and the temperature is forgiving; 325F suits a tough old bird better.
- A small glass of winePeriod recipes use the wineglass as a measure: roughly 2 fl oz, or a quarter cup. Half a cup will not hurt the sauce.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or oven until nut-brown, kept in a jar as a standing kitchen item. It thickens less strongly than raw flour. Toast it yourself in a dry skillet over medium heat, stirring, until it smells like biscuit and is the colour of weak coffee.
- Wild duck and donenessWild mallard and teal are far leaner than a supermarket Pekin, and lean enough that a braise is the right treatment for an older bird. If using farmed duck, expect a great deal of rendered fat in the pan liquor and skim before finishing the sauce. Cook to at least 165F in the thigh, and note that the stuffing must reach that temperature too.
- Total timeOne hour covered, then a further half hour after the flour and capers go in. Ninety minutes suits a small wild duck; a large farmed bird or a tough old mallard will want two hours or more before the leg gives.
- Egg ballsA standard Victorian garnish: sieved hard-boiled yolk worked to a paste with butter and rolled pea-sized. They are pretty but fragile — chill them briefly before setting them round the bird, and add them at the table so the hot sauce does not slump them.
- ServingOne wild duck serves one or two; a farmed duck of four to five pounds serves three. The toast squares are structural as much as decorative — they take up the buttery caper sauce, which is thin by modern standards.
Braised game with a caper-and-vinegar sauce belongs to the sweet-sour tradition that runs through European cooking of wildfowl, where acid is used to cut the strong, sometimes fishy taste of birds that have fed on the water. The cider vinegar, white wine and capers here do the work that a fruit sauce does elsewhere. The egg balls are a survival from much older English and American practice, where they garnished mock turtle soup and braised meats alike.