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Seasonings (Cut the carcasses of ducks)
Cut the carcasses of ducks into suitable pieces.
Melt in stew-pan some of fat skimmed from leftover gravy, add flour, and when hot put in the ducks and heat through thoroughly. Gradually add hot water and gizzard gravy cooked the day before.
When sufficient water has been added for stock, put in onions, carrots, a bay leaf, two cloves, a little salt and pepper and dash of cayenne. Simmer for one or more hours, uncovering stew occasionally to turn pieces in stock. Add gravy gradually, then the olives, and twenty minutes before serving, the potatoes. Serve with currant jelly.
A ragout built from picked-over duck frames, written for a cook who already had yesterday's gravy and giblet stock on hand. Quantities are almost entirely absent, so treat the sequence as the recipe and scale to what you have.
- What the carcass gives youTwo duck frames with the scraps left on them, jointed through the ribs with a heavy knife or shears, would probably stretch to three or four as a stew, though the recipe specifies no quantities. Any solid breast or leg meat is better held back and added in the last ten minutes so it does not shred away.
- The fat and flourThis is a roux, though the recipe hurries it: the ducks go in "when hot," so the flour is barely cooked rather than browned. If you want more depth, take it further, until it smells nutty and colours. Roughly 2 tablespoons fat to 2 tablespoons flour will lightly thicken about a quart of stock.
- Gizzard gravyThe giblet stock made "the day before" — neck, gizzard and heart simmered with aromatics. Any well-flavoured poultry stock stands in. Chill it overnight, lift the fat cap, and bring it to a full boil before it joins the pan.
- Adding liquidHot water and stock go in a ladle at a time, whisked smooth, or the roux will set into lumps. Aim to barely cover the pieces; more can be added as it reduces.
- Uncovered simmeringThe instruction is to uncover occasionally and turn the pieces, which implies the pan is otherwise covered; the gravy is added gradually, suggesting the cook topped up as the liquid cooked down. One hour is enough for meat this thin; longer only if the frames are meaty.
- OlivesGreen olives in brine, pitted; perhaps half a cup, though the recipe names no quantity. Olives of the period were commonly sold unpitted and in strong brine, so rinse modern ones and taste the stew before adding any more salt, since the brine plus reduced stock can push it over.
- PotatoesTwenty minutes suits waxy potatoes cut into 1-inch pieces. Floury varieties will collapse into the sauce in that time, which thickens it but loses the pieces.
- Currant jellyServed alongside, not stirred in — a spoonful on the plate. Red currant jelly is the standard sweet-tart foil for duck and game; a tart cranberry or sour cherry preserve does the same work.
Cookbooks devoted entirely to left-overs were a small industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aimed at households where a roast duck was a substantial expense and the carcass was understood to be the second meal rather than refuse. The dish itself is a thrift version of duck with olives, a pairing long established in French cooking as canard aux olives, where the salt and bitterness of the olive cuts the fat of the bird; here the olives arrive at the end of a stew whose body comes from flour and fat cooked fresh in the pan, with a gizzard gravy that a careful cook had cooked the day before. The currant jelly on the side is the older Anglo-American convention for all rich dark poultry and game.