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Roast Ducklings
Take a duckling weighing from three to three and a half pounds, singe, draw and wipe; then stuff with forcemeat, place in a roastingpan with half an ounce of butter, sprinkle with salt, and cook in the oven for forty minutes, basting occasionally. Lay the bird on a dish and untruss it; skim the fat off the liquor, add one teacupful of white broth, let it come to a boil, then strain over the bird, and garnish with fried hominy.
A short professional note from a hotel kitchen that assumes you have a plucked bird, a stockpot of white broth and a cook who knows when a duck is done. Two things need attention: the oven temperature is never given, and forty minutes will not carry a stuffed bird to a safe center.
- Oven heatThe original gives none. For a small duckling, a fairly quick oven of 400-425F is a sensible reading, which is also what renders the fat and crisps the skin.
- Forty minutes is not enough for a stuffed birdA whole duckling with forcemeat inside needs the stuffing to reach 165F, and that generally takes an hour and a quarter or more at 400F. Judge by a thermometer in the center of the stuffing and in the thigh, not by the clock.
- Bird sizeThis recipe calls for a 3 to 3.5 lb duckling. Today's Pekin ducks run 4.5 to 6 lb, so expect to add roasting time proportionally, or ask a butcher for the smallest bird available.
- Singe, draw and wipeAll three steps are done for you. A modern duck arrives drawn and largely pinfree; pull any remaining quills with tweezers and dry the skin thoroughly, which does more for browning than anything else here.
- Half an ounce of butterOne tablespoon. It is there only to start the basting, since a duck renders plenty of its own fat within twenty minutes.
- Teacupful of white brothRoughly three quarters of a cup to a cup. "White broth" is an unbrowned veal or chicken stock, unthickened and lightly seasoned; unsalted chicken stock stands in well.
- Skim the fatA duck gives up a great deal of fat and the pan liquor will be mostly grease. Pour it off into a jar and keep it; the small amount of dark drippings left underneath is what the broth is meant to loosen.
- Fried hominyCooked hominy or coarse grits, poured into a shallow pan, chilled firm, cut into squares or diamonds and fried in fat until crusted. A polenta-style treatment gives the same result.
- YieldOne duckling of this size serves two, three at a stretch with the stuffing and garnish.
Duckling was a New York specialty by the time Oscar Tschirky's book appeared in 1896, and the reason was Long Island: Pekin ducks brought from China in the early 1870s bred easily on the flat land east of the city and turned duck from an occasional game bird into a reliably fat, mild, quick-growing market bird. "Long Island duckling" became a fixture on American hotel menus for the next eighty years. The garnish of fried hominy marks the dish as American rather than French, since a Parisian kitchen would have reached for potatoes or turnips; hominy squares, crisp outside and soft within, went well with rich roasted meats.