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Roast Tame Duck
Take a young farmyard duck fattened at liberty, but cleansed by being shut up two or three days and fed on barley meal and water. Pluck, singe and empty; scald the feet, skin and twist round on the back of the bird; head, neck and pinions must be cut off, the latter at the first joint, and all skewered firmly to give the breast a nice plump appearance. For stuffing, one-half pound of onions, one teaspoon of powdered sage, three tablespoons of bread crumbs, the liver of a duck parboiled and minced with cayenne pepper and salt. Cut fine onions, throwing boiling water over them for ten minutes; drain through a gravy strainer, and add the bread crumbs, minced liver, sage, pepper and salt to taste; mix, and put inside the duck. This amount is for one duck; more onion and more sage may be added, but the above is a delicate compound not likely to disagree with the stomach. Let the duck be hung a day or two, according to the weather, to make the flesh tender. Roast before a brisk, clear fire, baste often, and dredge with flour to make the bird look frothy.
Serve with a good brown gravy in the dish, and apple sauce in a tureen. It takes about an hour.
A straightforward roast duck with a sage-and-onion stuffing, written for a bird cooked on a spit before an open fire. The oven version needs a different approach to time and fat.
- The birdA "young farmyard duck" is not given a weight or breed here; a modern dressed duck of 4-5 lb is a reasonable stand-in. Ignore the instructions on penning, feeding, plucking and hanging; a modern bird arrives dressed and needs none of it.
- Brisk, clear fireA spit before a hot fire has no direct oven equivalent. Start at 425F for about 20 minutes to set the skin, then drop to 350F for the remainder, allowing roughly 20 minutes per pound.
- The hour is too shortAn hour is plausible for a small bird turning inches from live coals with constant basting. A stuffed 5 lb duck in an oven wants closer to two hours. Go by temperature: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and in the centre of the stuffing.
- Render the fatThe single thing the original assumes and an oven cook must supply. Prick the skin all over through the fat but not into the meat, and pour the rendered fat out of the pan two or three times during roasting. Otherwise the bird sits and stews in its own grease and the skin never crisps.
- BastingBasting duck with its own fat does little except slow the skin's browning. Spit-roasting before an open fire is the context in which the original calls for frequent basting; in a closed oven, skip it and drain instead.
- Onions for the stuffingHalf a pound is two medium onions. The ten-minute soak in boiling water is a blanch to take the raw bite out; it works, and the drained onions should be squeezed reasonably dry so the stuffing does not go sodden.
- Dredging with flourA dusting of flour over the hot fat gives the "frothy" crackled surface prized in period roasting. Apply it in the last fifteen minutes only, or it scorches.
- ServingOne duck feeds two generously, three at a stretch. Rest it fifteen minutes before carving. The brown gravy is best built from the giblets and neck, simmered while the duck roasts, with the pan juices skimmed hard of fat before they go in.
Sage and onion with duck or goose is one of the oldest fixed pairings in English cookery, in print well before the nineteenth century and still the standard stuffing today; the apple sauce served alongside does the same job as the sage, cutting a rich, fatty bird with acidity and aromatics. What dates this version is everything around the cooking: the penning and feeding on barley meal to clean the bird, the hanging "a day or two, according to the weather," and the spit before a clear fire all belong to a household that dealt with live poultry and judged a fire by eye. There is even an anxious note that the stuffing is "a delicate compound not likely to disagree with the stomach" eruption empting reassurance as much as instruction.