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Broiled Teal Ducks
Choose three fine, fat teal; pick, singe and dry them; cut off their heads and split the birds into halves without separating the parts. Place them on a dish and season with one pinch of salt, one-half pinch of pepper and one tablespoonful of sweet oil. Roll them well in it and put them to broil over a moderate fire for seven or eight minutes on either side. Have in readiness a hot dish with six large slices of toasted bread; divide the teal and lay one-half of them on the top of each Spread over one gill of maitre d'hotel butter, garnish with a little watercress, and serve.
A plain grill recipe whose only real subtleties are sourcing the birds and not overcooking them. Teal are the smallest of the dabbling ducks, so the whole thing is over in a quarter of an hour.
- The hinge: stop earlyA teal half is thin, dark-meated and almost all breast. The recipe's seven to eight minutes a side, even over the moderate fire it calls for, is already generous by modern taste; pull the birds when the breast reads 125-130F for rosy or 135F for medium and let them rest a few minutes. Cooked through, teal turns dry and livery.
- Getting the birdsWild teal cannot legally be bought in the United States; they come from a licensed hunter in season. In Britain they are still sold by game dealers in season. If you have none, two boned duck breasts or three split squab give a similar result, and farmed duck is fattier so it wants a slightly cooler fire to avoid flare-ups.
- "Split into halves without separating the parts"Cut down through the backbone and flatten the bird, leaving the two halves joined at the breast so it cooks as one piece and can be divided at the table.
- Sweet oilOlive oil, in the mild, unassertive grade sold at the time. A tablespoon for three small birds is a coating, not a marinade.
- A moderate fireOn a charcoal grill this means a bed burned down to even grey coals, with the rack about four inches above; under a domestic broiler, full heat with the pan on the second rack. Duck fat dripping onto coals will flame, so keep a cooler zone to shift to.
- A gill of maitre d'hotel butterA gill is half a cup, roughly four ounces of butter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. That is a great deal for three teal; two ounces will soak the toast and gloss the birds without drowning them.
- YieldThree teal split in half make six pieces on six slices of toast, so this serves three as a main course or six as a first course.
- ShotWild-shot birds may carry pellets. Run a finger over the breast before cooking and warn anyone at the table.
Oscar Tschirky's book appeared in 1896, at the tail end of the era when wild waterfowl was ordinary market merchandise in New York; commercial hunters supplied hotel kitchens by the barrel, and a Waldorf menu could list teal, canvasback and mallard alongside beef. The Lacey Act of 1900 and then the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended that trade, which is why a dish that once needed nothing but a poulterer's order now depends on knowing someone with a shotgun. Teal — green-winged and blue-winged in North America — were prized for being small and quick to cook, exactly the qualities that suit a broiler working an a la carte line, and serving game birds on fried or toasted bread to catch the juices is a much older European practice that Oscar simply inherited.