Salmi of Duck
Save remnants of cold duck or other game, trim meat off neatly, set aside; place all the remains (bones, gravy, etc.) in a sauce-pan and cover with cold water; bring gently to a boil; skim, add an onion that has been cut up and fried brown (not burned); simmer gently for about an hour, then set the sauce-pan in a cool place long enough to allow the fat to rise and "settle on top;" skim this off carefully-it will be nice to fry potatoes with. Now return the sauce-pan to the fire, and when about to boil strain off the liquid; set on again, add salt and skim. If the liquid looks cloudy, let it boil up, throw in a little cold water, and the scum will rise. Now put in the pepper and such spice as may be desired, also a bunch of herbs tied up in a piece of muslin, or very finely powdered .
Take a large spoon of flour that has been baked in the oven and kept for gravy, mix it well with a lump of butter same size, put this and the meat all in together and stir well until it is just ready to boil again, but see that it does not boil; cover closely and set back where it may keep very hot without cooking. The safest plan is to put the sauce-pan in a vessel of hot water for ten or fifteen minutes .
A leftovers dish built on a quick game stock, essentially a reheated hash in a brown sauce. The whole point is that the sliced meat is warmed through, never simmered.
- The hinge: no second boilOnce the trimmed meat goes back into the sauce, it must not boil. Already-cooked duck goes dry and stringy in minutes at a simmer; the original's remedy is to hold the covered pan in a vessel of hot water for ten or fifteen minutes, well below boiling. No temperature is given.
- Browned flour"Flour that has been baked in the oven and kept for gravy" is dry-toasted flour, kept as a standing pantry item. Spread flour in a dry pan and toast it over medium heat, or in a moderate oven, until the colour of dry sand, stirring often; the recipe gives no temperature. Toasted flour thickens noticeably less than raw flour, so the recipe's large spoonful worked with an equal lump of butter will only lightly bind a cup or so of stock.
- The fried onionFry it in fat until genuinely brown, not golden. With the toasted flour it is a principal source of colour in the sauce.
- Clearing the stockThe cold-water trick works: the drop in temperature makes coagulated protein clump and rise so it can be skimmed. It is the same principle as clarifying consomme, without the egg white.
- The skimmed fatDuck fat is worth the trouble. Refrigerate the strained stock and lift the solid cap off the next day rather than trying to spoon it hot; it keeps a week or two in the fridge, longer frozen.
- Herbs"A bunch of herbs tied up in muslin" is a bouquet garni: thyme, parsley stems, a bay leaf. Add it with the pepper and pull it out before the meat goes in.
- Quantities and yieldThe recipe gives none. The carcass and trimmings of one duck yield roughly a cup and a half to two cups of finished sauce and enough meat for two, served over toast, rice or the fried potatoes the recipe hints at.
- SubstitutionsRoast chicken, turkey, pheasant or goose all work. Wild duck gives a stronger, more livery sauce than farmed; taste for salt late, since reduced game stock concentrates fast.
Salmi (also spelled salmis) is French, generally traced to a shortening of salmigondis, an old word for a ragout of mixed meats that also gave English "salmagundi." In classic French practice a salmis was a piece of showmanship: the bird was roasted rare, carved at table, and the carcass pounded in a press to extract juices for the sauce. What appears here is the thrifty domestic descendant of that. The instruction to keep oven-browned flour on hand "for gravy" points the same way: a kitchen organized around having the components of a sauce already made.