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Mallard Wild Duck
These ducks are considered very dry when roasted in the usual way. They are sometimes stuffed with the common bread stuffing, then well sewed up, tied in shape and placed in a large kettle with a couple of slices of onion, a little thyme, and a small quantity of water. They are cooked slowly for one hour, being turned frequently. The water should be replenished, but only enough should be added to keep the ducks from burning. A gravy is made from the juices in the kettle by adding one cup of water to them and thickening with flour. This gravy is poured over the ducks when served. Dressed in this way all parts are equally good.
DUCK À LA CRÉOLE-Melt two tablespoons of butter and mix with it one tablespoon of flour. Stir into this two teaspoons each of finely chopped ham, onion, celery, sweet pepper and parsley. Season with salt, pepper and paprika. Stir for two minutes, add a cup of consommé or bouillon, a clove and a little mace. Simmer an hour. Strain and stir into it two cups of cold duck cut into cubes. Boil just long enough to heat all thoroughly. Serve with diamonds of fried hominy or mush.
VENISON-Venison is prepared and cooked the same as mutton. The roasting pieces are the saddle and leg. It should be cooked underdone, allowing ten to twelve minutes to the pound, and served with currant jelly and green salad. 1
Three linked entries: a braise for wild mallard, a Creole ragout for the leftovers, and a note on venison. The first is the useful one, and its point is that wild duck is not roast duck.
- It is a braise, not a roastWild mallard has almost none of the fat that makes a farmed Pekin forgiving in a hot oven. The kettle with a little water is doing the work here, and the frequent turning keeps the exposed side from drying. The recipe does not say whether the kettle is lidded; keep the water as shallow as it directs, only enough to stop the bird catching.
- The kettleA heavy pot with a tight lid over low heat; the recipe gives no oven and no temperature. "Slowly for one hour" suits a bird of roughly 2 to 2.5 lb dressed, a large mallard; smaller teal or wigeon will be done well before that.
- Stuffing and temperatureBread stuffing inside a braised bird sits in the coolest part of the pan. If you stuff it, check that the centre of the stuffing reaches 165F before serving, or cook the stuffing alongside in the pan liquid instead. A stuffed bird also needs longer than the hour given.
- Shot and the pluckingWild birds carry lead or steel pellets and often bruised, blood-shot flesh around the wound channels. Feel through the breast before cooking and cut away damaged tissue; grit and shot are what ruin an otherwise good gravy.
- Thickening the gravyOne cup of water to the pan juices, thickened with flour, means roughly 1 to 1.5 tablespoons of flour whisked to a slurry or worked into softened butter. Wild duck juices are strongly flavoured, so taste before salting.
- Duck a la CreoleThis is a leftover dish. Two cups of cubed cooked duck goes into a strained, hour-simmered sauce, then is heated through only. Boiling it longer toughens meat that is already fully cooked.
- Sweet pepper and mace"Sweet pepper" here means a bell pepper, most likely green. Mace is the dried aril covering the nutmeg seed, milder and more floral than the nut; a blade or a pinch of ground is enough alongside the single clove, and both are strained off as directed.
- Diamonds of fried hominy or mushCook coarse hominy grits or cornmeal mush stiff, spread it about half an inch thick on a tray, chill until firm, cut into diamonds and fry in butter or bacon fat until crisp. Diamonds of fried mush were a common garnish in cookbooks of the period.
- The venison timingTen to twelve minutes to the pound is a rough guide only; the recipe gives no oven temperature, and household meat thermometers were not yet in common use. Roast venison saddle or leg to an internal 125-130F for rare to medium-rare and rest it; the meat is so lean that a few minutes past that turns it grey and dry.
- YieldOne mallard serves one to two. The Creole ragout, using two cups of cooked meat, serves two to three.
The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911, at the tail end of a period when wild waterfowl was still ordinary domestic food in America rather than a hunter's luxury, and cookbooks could give mallard, canvasback and teal their own entries alongside chicken. Market hunting supplied city butchers with wild ducks until a succession of laws — the Lacey Act of 1900, the Weeks-McLean Act of 1913 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 — brought the commercial trade to an end, after which recipes like this one began disappearing from general household books. The entry opens by admitting that these ducks are "very dry when roasted in the usual way," a departure from the fashionable restaurant treatment of the day, which was to roast wild duck very fast and very rare; the braise offered here is a plainer, more forgiving household answer. The Creole ragout tacked on after it reflects another turn-of-the-century habit, the national cookbook borrowing a regional dish, in this case the roux-and-trinity base of Louisiana cooking, and pressing it into service as a way of using yesterday's bird.