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Braised Duck with Mushrooms
Braise a duck. Melt two ounces of butter in a stewpan; add a few chives, several finely-minced mushrooms and a bunch of parsley, and fry them for ten minutes; dredge in a little flour; add the liquor from the duck after braising, and stir over the fire for a few minutes; skim off the fat and strain. Place the duck on a dish, pour over the gravy, and serve.
Oscar assumes you already know how to braise a duck — the instruction is a cross-reference to the kitchen's standard method, not a shortcut. What is written here is really the sauce, and the sauce depends entirely on the braising liquor.
- The braise itselfThe recipe gives no method at all: Oscar assumes it. A modern reconstruction would brown the duck all over in its own fat, pour off the fat, set it on a bed of onion, carrot and celery with stock, cover tightly and cook in a moderate oven until the legs are tender — the book specifies neither temperature nor time. Duck breast will be well past pink by then; that is expected in a braise, and the point of the dish is the leg meat and the liquor.
- Two ounces of butterFour tablespoons, half a stick. With the flour dredged in it makes a loose roux; the recipe gives no quantity for the braising liquor, so the gravy will be thin by modern taste.
- Fry them for ten minutesTen minutes over gentle heat, not brisk. The mushrooms should give up their water and the butter should stay blond; if the flour goes brown before the liquor is added, the sauce turns bitter.
- A bunch of parsleyTied with string and added whole, then lifted out or caught in the strainer. Chives here behave more like a mild onion than a garnish; the recipe gives no quantity for them.
- Skim off the fat, then strainThe single step that decides the dish. A braised duck renders a great deal of fat. Let the liquor settle a few minutes and skim, or chill it and lift the cap off; save it for potatoes.
- MushroomsCultivated white mushrooms are the likely intent; the recipe says only "several," finely minced. Note that the sauce is strained, so the mushrooms flavour the gravy rather than remain in it.
- YieldOne duck serves three, four if carved generously alongside other courses. Serve the sauce over the bird as written, or carve first and sauce the plates, which is easier to manage.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) was written for households aspiring to the standards of the Waldorf, and its terseness is characteristic: entries appear to assume the reader can look up the base technique elsewhere in the volume, much as a cook in a professional brigade might be told to "braise a duck" and nothing more. The sauce here is a simple flour-thickened French-style sauce built on the braising liquor, flavoured with chives, parsley and mushrooms. Duck was a hotel staple in this period, much of it Long Island duckling, descended from Pekin ducks generally traced to a shipment brought to the United States in the 1870s; braising rather than roasting suited older or larger birds, whose legs reward long moist cooking.