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Duckling Stew
Bones and meat left 4 small boiled potafrom a pair of roast ducklings 3 small onions 3 or 4 small carrots cut in slices or cubes toes cut in cubes Few stoned olives
What survives here is the shopping list for a stew built on the carcass of two roast ducklings: the bones make the broth, the picked meat and vegetables go in at the end. A few of the terms and proportions need translating.
- Bones first, meat lastThe hinge of the dish is the stock. Break up the carcasses, cover with water, and simmer an hour or more with a bay leaf and the onion trimmings; strain, skim the fat, then build the stew in that liquid. The picked meat is already cooked and only needs warming through in the last five minutes or it will turn stringy.
- "Stoned olives"Stoned means pitted. The recipe does not say which kind; brined green olives are a reasonable choice. Add them near the end, and taste before salting the stew at all, since olives and reduced duck stock both bring their own salt.
- Already-boiled potatoesThe potatoes in the list are cooked, not raw. Cube them and add in the final few minutes simply to heat; raw potatoes would need a good twenty minutes and would cloud the broth.
- Carrots and onionsThese go in raw with the strained stock and want 15-20 minutes at a bare simmer to soften. Small onions may be left whole if you prefer them to hold their shape.
- Duck fatRoast duckling gives up a great deal of fat, and it will rise as the stock cools. Chill the strained broth and lift the cap off, leaving a spoonful behind for flavour; unskimmed, the stew reads greasy rather than rich.
- ThickeningNo thickener is specified, and none is needed for a brothy stew. If you want body, a tablespoon of flour cooked briefly in a little of the reserved duck fat and whisked in will do it without dulling the flavour.
- YieldTwo ducklings picked clean give roughly two to three cups of meat, which with the vegetables serves four as a main dish with bread.
Books of this kind belong to a long tradition of household economy writing that treated a roast as the beginning of two or three meals rather than one. A pair of ducklings carved for the table leaves a great deal behind -- the backs, wings, neck and the meat clinging to the frame -- and such books often recommended simmering the carcass for broth. The olives are the one flourish: cooking duck with olives is a long-established French pairing, generally associated with the south, where the fruit's brine cuts the bird's fat.