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Fillets of Wild Ducks
Prepare and roast the ducks as for fillets of wild ducks with game sauce, keeping them rather underdone. When cooked remove the fillets from the breasts and trim them neatly. Cut as many croutons of bread as there are fillets, and fry them in butter until they are of a golden brown color. Chop the livers of the ducks, season with salt, pepper and finely-minced parsley, and work in a small quantity of butter. Spread the croutons with a layer of the liver mixture, thicker in the middle than at the sides; place them for a few minutes in a hot oven, and then brown them with a salamander. Arrange the fillets and croutons in a circle on a hot dish alternately, pour in the center some game sauce with a few mild stoned olives in it, and serve. Fillets of Wild Ducks with Orange Sauce Fillet three wild ducks, score the skin and put them in a bowl with onions cut in halves, a few sprigs of parsley, some mushroom catsup, and season with salt, peppercorns, and cover with oil. When the fillets have steeped in this marinade for an hour take them out, put them in a fryingpan with a little oil, and fry them over a sharp fire, turning occasionally. When done drain, arrange on a dish in a circular form, and serve with orange sauce in a sauceboat.
Two related preparations from the Waldorf's game repertoire, both written for a kitchen that had wild ducks hanging in the larder and a brigade to trim fillets. The essentials translate cleanly; the vocabulary and the sourcing do not.
- Fillets means the breasts"Fillet three wild ducks" is an instruction to remove the two breast halves from each bird, skin on. Six fillets serve three to four people as a course; the recipe says nothing about the legs, which on a wild bird are tough and would more likely be used for stock or a salmi than served alongside.
- Wild duck is not a purchaseCommercial sale of wild waterfowl has been illegal in the United States for over a century, so this dish now depends on a hunter. Farmed duck breast (magret or Pekin) behaves similarly but is fatter, milder and needs its skin scored and rendered slowly rather than fried over a sharp fire.
- Keeping them rather underdoneWild duck breast is served pink at about 130-135F internal; past that it turns liver-like and dry. Note that public-health guidance for wild game birds is a full 165F, which will give you a different and much firmer dish.
- SalamanderA salamander was an iron plate heated in the fire and passed over food to glaze it. Use an overhead broiler on high, watching closely, after the few minutes in a hot oven; the recipe gives no temperature.
- The liver spreadRaw chopped liver worked with butter is only briefly cooked here, by the oven and the salamander. Keep the layer thin at the edges as directed so it sets through, and use livers only from a bird you know the provenance of.
- CroutonsNot the cubes for a salad: rounds or ovals of crustless bread cut to the size of each fillet and fried in butter to golden brown. Cut them before you cook the ducks so the timing works out.
- Game sauceNot specified here; in hotel practice of the period it would generally be a brown sauce built on espagnole with game trimmings and wine, on the lines of a sauce poivrade. Any well-reduced duck or game stock sauce serves; the stoned olives should be mild green ones, rinsed.
- Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, not tomato ketchup. Mushroom ketchup is still sold in Britain; a spoonful of soy sauce or a strong dried-mushroom soaking liquid gives the same savoury note in the marinade.
- The marinadeAn hour in oil with onion, parsley and peppercorns is for flavour, not tenderising. Do it in the refrigerator and drain and dry the fillets well, or they will steam rather than sear.
Wild duck was the prestige game of American hotel dining when Oscar Tschirky was running the Waldorf's floor, and canvasback in particular commanded prices that put it alongside diamondback terrapin on a menu. That trade rested on market hunters shipping barrels of shot birds to city restaurants -- a business that the Lacey Act of 1900 and then the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 closed down, which is why a page like this reads as an artifact rather than a recipe you can shop for. The construction is pure French practice as it was taught in the great hotel kitchens: breasts served pink, the trimmings and offal turned into a garnish, croutons to catch the juices, and a dark game sauce poured into the center of a ring of meat. The second variation, with orange, is the same instinct that produced canard a l'orange, the acid of the fruit set against a rich, iron-tasting bird.