Duck Pie
757. Cut off the wings and neck of a duck, boil it a quarter of an hour, cut it up while hot, save the gravy that runs from it; then take the giblets, add anchovies, a little butter, a blade of mace, six black peppercorns, two onions, a bit of toasted bread, a bunch of herbs, and a little cayenne pepper. Stew them till the butter is melted, then add half a pint of boiling water, and let them stew till the giblets are tender; then strain it, and put the giblets into the pie. Let the gravy stand till cold, skim off the fat, and put it with what runs from the duck at the bottom of the dish; then put in the duck, well seasoned with pepper and salt and a few lumps of butter, and cover with short crust or puff paste (see pars. 725 and 732). If geese are used instead of ducks, they must be boiled half an hour. Cold duck will do as well, if the skin is taken off,
A two-stage pie: the duck is parboiled and jointed, while the giblets make a strongly seasoned stock that becomes the gravy inside the crust. The key point is that fifteen minutes of boiling only firms the bird — the pie itself does the real cooking.
- Finish the cooking in the ovenA quarter of an hour in the pot leaves duck legs well short of done. The book gives no oven instruction, so any temperature is a modern suggestion: a moderate oven for something like an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half, with the crust covered once it colours, should bring the thigh meat to the point where it pulls from the bone.
- Half a pintBritish imperial measure, so 10 fl oz, a shade under a cup and a quarter by US measure. Reduce the strained giblet stock if it tastes thin; apart from what runs from the bird, it is the liquid in the pie.
- GibletsHeart, gizzard and neck, not the liver, which turns the stock bitter and grainy. A supermarket duck may come with only a neck and liver, so ask a butcher or supplement with chicken wings.
- Blade of maceA whole strip of the lacy husk from nutmeg, still sold in Indian and specialist spice shops. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes; add it late so it does not go musty.
- AnchoviesThe salt-packed or oil-packed fillets act as seasoning, not flavouring — two fillets, mashed, dissolve into the stock and read as savoury depth. Salt the pie only after tasting the strained gravy.
- The bit of toasted breadAn older thickener: the crust dissolves and gives the gravy body. It goes into the stew and is strained out with the aromatics, so a dark, dry crust works better than fresh bread.
- Skimming mattersDuck renders a great deal of fat, and the instruction to chill the stock and lift the cap off is not optional. Fat left in will pool under the crust and make the pastry sodden.
- GooseHalf an hour of parboiling for goose, as the original says, and a correspondingly longer bake; goose leg is tougher and larger, so expect it to need considerably more time in the oven than duck.
- YieldOne duck should fill a pie dish of roughly 9 inches and feed about four; allow something like 12 oz of short crust or puff pastry for the lid. The recipe itself gives no dish size or quantity.
Giblet-enriched poultry pies were common economy in nineteenth-century English kitchens: the wings, neck and gizzard that would not sit well under a crust could be boiled down into the gravy that did. The anchovy is worth noticing — salted anchovy was a familiar British source of savoury depth, used in meat pies and gravies as readily as with fish. The closing line about cold duck doing as well points to the tradition of remaking a roast, and the note to remove the skin reflects the fact that once-cooked duck skin turns flabby rather than crisp under pastry.