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Salmis of Wild Duck
Cut off all the flesh from two roasted wild ducks, skin and trim them, and put the meat in a stewpan, Put the bones, trimmings and skins, with four shallots, four onions (one stuck with four cloves), one bunch of parsley and half a bottle of claret in another stewpan, and boil till the liquor is reduced to half its original quantity; then add one and one-half pints of Spanish sauce, and simmer for twenty minutes. Skim, strain through a conical strainer into another stewpan and boil till the sauce coats the spoon. Pour one-fourth of this over the pieces of duck, and set the pan over the fire till they are hot through, but do not boil them. Dish the duck, pour over the remainder of the sauce, garnish with croutons of fried bread, and serve.
A classic salmis: the birds are roasted first, then carved, and their carcasses build the sauce. The work is almost entirely in the sauce, and the one rule is that the carved meat is warmed in it, never simmered.
- Do not let the meat boilWild duck breast is lean and already cooked, and holding it at a simmer toughens it and dulls the colour. Bring the sauce to temperature first, add the meat, and keep the pan over gentle heat only until warmed through, without letting it boil.
- Spanish sauceThis is sauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce built from a dark roux, brown veal stock and mirepoix. One and a half pints is 3 cups. A well-reduced brown veal or game stock, lightly thickened, stands in for it if you are not making espagnole from scratch.
- ClaretIn an American book of this period claret means dry red Bordeaux or something in that style. Half a bottle is about 12 fl oz; any dry, moderately tannic red works.
- The birdsTwo wild ducks (mallard, teal, canvasback) yield far less meat than farmed birds and are much leaner. Two 4-5 lb Pekin or Muscovy ducks will overwhelm this quantity of sauce; use one, or increase the sauce. Wild waterfowl cannot legally be sold in the United States, so the birds must come from a hunter; farm-raised mallard is the usual substitute.
- Conical strainerA chinois. Press the solids firmly, then strain again through a fine mesh if you want the glossy finish the recipe is after.
- Coats the spoonThe nappe stage: drawn a finger through the sauce on the back of a spoon, the track holds. Expect the reduction to take 15-25 minutes over a moderate flame, and season only at the end since reducing concentrates the salt.
- Onions and shallotsFour onions is a great deal against half a bottle of wine; medium yellow onions, roughly chopped, are what is meant, and three will do without loss. The clove-studded onion is the standard aromatic of the period and can simply be lifted out before straining.
- CroutonsTriangles of crustless white bread fried in clarified butter or duck fat until crisp, arranged points-up around the dish. They are there to carry the sauce, so fry them close to service.
- YieldTwo wild ducks serve about four as a main course, or stretch further if the salmis follows a substantial soup or fish course.
Salmis is a classic technique in French game cookery — the name is generally traced to salmigondis, an old word for a ragout of mixed meats — and it exists because roasted game birds were once carved at table and the carcasses were far too valuable to discard. The method is frankly economical dressed as luxury: the breasts and legs come off the bird, the frame and skin are simmered in a red-wine reduction, and that reduction is bound with espagnole to make a sauce richer than the meat it coats. By the time Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf in the 1890s, wild duck was still a market bird in New York, sold in quantity from the Chesapeake and the Great Lakes, and canvasback in particular was a status dish on American hotel menus. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended the commercial sale of wild waterfowl in the United States, which is why a recipe that once assumed a poulterer's supply now assumes a hunter's.