Boiled Duck
Dress and rub well inside with salt and pepper, truss and tie in shape, drawing the legs in to the body, in which put one or two sage leaves, a little finely chopped onion, and a little jellied stock or gravy; rub over with salt and pepper; make a paste in the proportion of one-half pound butter to one pound flour, in which inclose the duck, tie a cloth around all, and boil two hours or until quite tender, keeping it well covered with boiling water. Serve by pouring round it brown gravy made as follows: Put a lump of butter of the size of an egg in a sauce-pan with a little minced onion; cook until slightly brown, then adding a small table-spoon of flour, stir well, and when quite brown add a half pint stock or water; let cook a few minutes, strain, and add to the chopped giblets, previously stewed till tender. - Mrs. L. S. Williston.
This is an old-fashioned huff paste cookery — the flour-and-butter crust is a sealed vessel, not food. Everything else follows from that.
- The paste is a wrapper, not pastryThe paste is a wrapper rather than pastry -- One pound flour to half a pound butter, with enough water to bind, gives a stiff, unleavened casing whose job is to keep water out and juices in. The recipe says nothing about serving it; it is cut away at the end.
- Wrap it properly or lose itThe hinge of the dish is the seal. Roll the paste about a quarter-inch thick, encase the bird with no gaps at the seams, then bind the whole in a floured pudding cloth tied tightly at the top. A split in the paste means two hours of boiling water in your duck.
- Which duckThe recipe does not say whether the bird is wild or domestic. A domestic duck of 4-5 lb is heavily fatted, and boiling renders that fat into the paste rather than crisping it; a small, lean, dark wild bird suits the method better.
- Two hours is for a mature wild birdTwo hours suits a large or mature bird -- A tough old bird genuinely wants that long; a small or young one will be done well inside an hour. Judge by the leg joint moving freely rather than by the clock, and note that this method cannot produce a pink breast -- it is a cookery of falling-tender meat.
- Keep it submerged"Keeping it well covered with boiling water" is an instruction, not a flourish. Top up from a kettle of boiling water, never cold, or the pot goes off the boil and the paste softens.
- "A lump of butter the size of an egg"About 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. "A small table-spoon of flour" is a scant tablespoon — the gravy is deliberately thin, a pouring sauce rather than a coating one. Half a pint of stock is one cup.
- Browning the rouxCook the butter, onion and flour until genuinely brown, not blond; this is where the sauce gets its colour, since nothing in a boiled bird contributes any. Add the stock off the heat to avoid lumps, then strain out the onion before the giblets go in.
- GibletsHeart, gizzard and neck, simmered separately until tender, then chopped fine. Discard the liver from a wild bird if it is discoloured, and remove any shot from the carcass before wrapping.
- YieldOne wild duck serves two, at most; a domestic bird four. Have the gravy ready before you unwrap, as the bird cools quickly once the paste is cut away.
Enclosing meat or game in a stiff flour paste before boiling or baking is a very old English kitchen practice, generally traced back to the medieval "coffin" crust — a container made of dough rather than a thing to eat. By the nineteenth century the technique survived mainly for birds and hams, where the paste kept water from washing out flavour during a long boil in the days before reliable sealed pots and ovens. Its appearance here, in a household compilation crediting a named contributor, shows how far such inherited English methods travelled and how long they persisted in domestic cooking. The sage, onion and giblet gravy are equally traditional English duck accompaniments; the sage in particular was often said to counter the richness of waterfowl.