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Stewed Duck's Giblets
Wash the giblets, cut up the gizzards; disjoint the head, neck and pinions, and put them over the fire in a stewpan; add a small onion, a couple of cloves, one dozen peppercorns, a small bunch of savory herbs, a teaspoonful of catsup, two ounces of butter and half a pint of broth. Let them stew gently until the giblets are tender, then lay them on a hot dish. Strain the gravy, put it back into the stewpan, thicken with a little butter rolled in corn meal, and stir in one wineglassful of white wine. Pour the gravy over the giblets, and serve hot.
Ducks, Hunter's Style Take three ducks, singe, draw, truss and cook in a stewpan with a piece of butter over a moderate fire. Fry the livers of the ducks with other poultry livers or slices of calf's liver; when they are cool pound them and pass through a sieve, mix in a little glaze and with it mask a few bread-crusts cut into oblong shapes and browned in butter. Arrange in the center of a dish a heap of green peas or any other vegetable; cut the ducks into pieces of fillets, trim them, arrange them with the crusts around the pyramid and place a decorated skewer in the center of the heap. Mask the fillets of duck with brown sauce reduced with Madeira, and serve. Serve the remainder of the sauce in a sauceboat.
Two recipes have run together in this printing: the giblet stew and, following it, Ducks, Hunter's Style. The notes below cover both, with the giblets first.
- The hinge: gizzards set the clockGizzard is dense working muscle and needs 1 to 1½ hours of bare simmering before it slices tenderly. Necks and wing tips are ready sooner, but there is no harm in leaving them in; heart can go in with the gizzard. Liver is deliberately absent here, and should stay absent — it would turn grainy and muddy the gravy.
- What a giblet set contained"Head and pinions" means the duck's head and the two outer wing joints. Both were more commonly left with the bird than they are today, and both are hard to find in a modern packet. A packet of necks, hearts and gizzards, or two duck necks plus a pound of gizzards, gives the same dish.
- MeasuresHalf a pint of broth is one cup. Two ounces of butter is half a stick. A wineglassful was generally reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces in period usage, a scant quarter cup.
- "Butter rolled in corn meal"This is a beurre manié, and in a strained gravy cornmeal will read as gritty. The intent is a fine starch — cornstarch or flour, about a tablespoon worked into an equal weight of soft butter, whisked into the simmering gravy off the boil.
- CatsupNineteenth-century catsup was as often mushroom or walnut as tomato, and was thin, dark and salty rather than sweet. A teaspoon of mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire is closer to the intended savory note than modern tomato ketchup.
- Savory herbsA bunch here means a tied bundle of parsley stems, thyme and a bay leaf, pulled out before straining. "Savory" is the character, not necessarily the herb summer savory.
- YieldThe giblet stew is a small course, probably enough for two, and it reduces to very little if the pan is left to boil rather than barely tremble. The recipe says only to stew gently; covering the pan and topping up with broth if the level drops below the meat will keep it from drying out.
- Reading the Hunter's Style recipeTo mask is to coat; glaze is stock reduced to a syrup; draw is to remove the innards. The ducks are pan-roasted whole in butter over moderate heat — figure 165–170F in the thigh for legs and, if you prefer duck breast pink, carve the breasts earlier at about 130F. Three ducks of this sort serve six generously.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 volume came out of the Waldorf, a hotel kitchen that bought whole birds, which may be why a set of giblets rates its own entry. The pairing on this page shows the two ends of the same bird — the neck and gizzard stewed with onion, cloves and a spoonful of ketchup, and then the fillets arranged in a pyramid with a decorated skewer, in the elaborate service style generally traced to Carême and carried into American hotels through Delmonico's. "Hunter's style" (à la chasseur) usually signals mushrooms and wine in French practice; Oscar's version uses the livers as a spread for fried bread crusts, a treatment still recognizable in Italian crostini di fegatini.