Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Roast Ducks
Roast Ducks
Truss the birds, having first removed the pinions, legs, crop, entrails and oil-bags; rub a little butter over them and dredge with flour, salt and pepper, and roast in a hot oven for twenty or thirty minutes. If preferred stuffed, peel, core and quarter some apples and fill the body with them, removing them when the bird is done, as they are not fit to eat, the flavor being too strong. Serve with olive sauce and green peas.
A terse professional note rather than a home recipe: Oscar assumes a small, young duck and a cook who already knows how to truss a bird. The timing is the part that needs the most translation.
- "A hot oven"Read this as 425-450F. At that heat the flour-and-butter coating browns fast and the skin renders, which is the whole point of the short roast.
- Twenty to thirty minutesThat is a rare-to-pink duck, which is what the period expected of a young duckling. A modern 5-6 lb Pekin duck will not be cooked through in that time; the breast may read 135-140F while the legs are still tough. Either accept a pink breast and carve only the breast, or plan on a longer roast at a lower heat and finish hot for the skin.
- The oil-bagsThe uropygial (preen) gland at the base of the tail. Most ducks sold today are already dressed, but if you buy from a farm, cut the tail nub off entirely rather than trying to dig the gland out.
- Pinions and cropThe pinion is the last wing joint, removed because it burns; the crop is the pouch at the base of the neck, which comes out with the neck skin. Both are done for you on supermarket birds.
- Prick the skinOscar does not say so, but a domestic duck carries a heavy layer of subcutaneous fat. Prick the fat pads over the breast and thighs before roasting and pour off the fat once or twice, or the flour dredge will simply fry.
- The applesThey are aromatic ballast, not stuffing. They absorb the strong fat and are discarded, exactly as an onion or a halved lemon is used now. Do not be tempted to serve them.
- Olive sauceA brown sauce or duck gravy finished with blanched, stoned green olives. Blanching matters: unblanched brine-cured olives will make the sauce salty and harsh.
- YieldOne duck serves two generously, three at a pinch.
Duck at the Waldorf in Oscar Tschirky's day likely meant Long Island duckling, the white Pekin bird whose introduction to the United States from China is usually dated to the early 1870s and which was widely used in New York restaurants by the end of the century. Those birds were killed young, though not necessarily much smaller than a modern Pekin, so the short roast reflects period taste for underdone duck as much as the size of the bird. The apple treatment belongs to the older northern European handling of fat waterfowl, where apple, onion or sage was packed into the cavity and then discarded, and related practice survives in the roast goose of German and Scandinavian tables. Olive sauce with duck is a French carryover, close kin to the canard aux olives of provincial cooking, and its presence here is a good reminder that the Waldorf kitchen was a French kitchen serving American produce.