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Broiled Wild Ducks
Pick, singe, draw and wipe well a pair of wild ducks, split them down the back without detaching, place them skin downwards on a dish, season with salt and pepper and pour over two tablespoonfuls of oil. Boil the birds well in this marinade, place them on a broiler over a brisk fire, and broil for seven minutes on each side. Place them on a hot dish, cover with maitre d'hotel butter, garnish with watercress, and serve.
A terse professional note rather than a home recipe: two birds, oil, fire, compound butter. The whole thing turns on high heat and short time.
- "Boil the birds well in this marinade"Almost certainly a compositor's error for roll. Nothing is boiled here; the birds are turned in the oil and seasoning so both sides are coated before they meet the fire.
- Splitting without detachingCut down either side of the backbone, or straight through it, and open the bird flat like a book so the breasts and legs sit level on the grill. Flattening it under a weight for a few minutes helps it cook evenly.
- A brisk fireLive coals raked hot, or a modern grill at its highest setting. Under an overhead broiler, use the top rack position and preheat fully. The point is a hard sear before the interior overcooks.
- Seven minutes a sideOn a hot fire this should leave the breast pink rather than cooked through, which is the traditional treatment for wild duck, though the result depends on the size of the bird and the heat of the fire. Wild birds carry the same bacterial risks as any raw poultry, so surfaces and hands need the usual care; if rare game is not to your taste, cook the legs separately, since they need far longer than the breast.
- Which duck, and how big"Wild ducks" covers species that differ enormously in size — mallard, canvasback, redhead, teal. A pair of mallards serves two to four; a pair of teal is one portion each. Adjust the time down sharply for small birds.
- SourcingWild waterfowl cannot legally be sold in the United States, so this is a hunter's dish. Farmed duck is not a substitute here in flavour, and its fat layer behaves quite differently under a hot broiler.
- Maître d'hôtel butterOscar assumes his cooks know it: softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled and sliced onto the hot birds so it melts into a sauce.
- Pick, singe, drawPluck, pass over a flame to burn off pinfeathers and down, then gut and wipe dry. Any bird bought or received already dressed skips straight to the marinade, but drying the skin thoroughly still matters for browning.
Wild duck was a prestige item on late nineteenth-century American hotel menus, and canvasback in particular was priced above almost anything else in the game section — its reputation resting on a diet of wild celery in the Chesapeake. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, worked in an era when market hunters supplied restaurants by the barrel, which is why a book of this date can treat a pair of wild ducks as a routine order rather than a rarity. That trade was progressively shut down by the Lacey Act of 1900 and then the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, after which commercial sale of native waterfowl ended in the United States. The method itself — fierce heat, a few minutes, a compound butter — is classic French grillade practice applied to an American bird, and reflects the standing rule that a wild duck served well done is a wasted duck.