No. 1917

Duck a la Britannia—Stuffed

Canard Farci a la Britannia

Chop up a little green sage also one shallot, put them into a vessel and season with salt and pepper, add three hard-boiled egg-yolks, two dozen chestnuts and two tablespoonfuls of bread-crumbs; work the whole well together and with it fill the duck; truss and roast for three-quarters of an hour to one hour, then dress on a crouton of fried bread, pour over a poulette sauce (No. 527), and serve more in another sauce-boat.

← No. 1916 Chickens with New Vegetables-Small—Braised Duck & Goose No. 1918 Duck a la Matignon →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional kitchen with a saucier down the bench, so the stuffing is spelled out and the sauce is a cross-reference. A few things need translating before this works on a home range.

The hinge: the sauce must not boilPoulette is a velouté finished with egg yolks, lemon and butter. Once the yolks go in, keep it below a simmer or it will scramble and break; hold it off the heat and warm it gently at the last moment.
ChestnutsTwo dozen means peeled, cooked chestnuts, not raw ones in the shell. Simmer or roast and peel them first, then break them up coarsely so the stuffing has texture rather than paste. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts are a fair substitute.
Sage and shallot"Green sage" most likely means ordinary green-leaved sage, fresh rather than dried, and a little is right — a scant tablespoon chopped for one duck. The shallot is best softened in a spoonful of butter first; raw shallot stays sharp inside a stuffing that only cooks an hour.
The stuffing binds looselySieved hard-boiled yolks, crumbs and chestnut have no liquid at all. Ranhofer expects you to "work the whole well together" into a workable mass; a spoonful of melted butter or stock makes that possible without turning it wet.
Oven and timingThe recipe gives no temperature; a hot oven, somewhere around 425F, fits the stated timing. Three-quarters of an hour to an hour suits a 4–5 lb duckling with a pink breast, but a stuffed bird runs slower — check that the stuffing centre reaches 165F and the thigh joint is loose before you carve.
Rendering the fatPrick the skin over the breast and thighs before it goes in, and pour off the fat once or twice during roasting so the crouton beneath does not drown.
The croutonA slice of crustless bread cut to the size of the bird, fried in clarified butter until crisp and dry. It is a platter base to catch juices, not something to serve pale and soft.
YieldOne duck of this size serves two generously, three at a table with several courses — which is how the book assumes it will be eaten.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where French technique was applied to whatever the American market offered. The name is one of Ranhofer's many honorific labels rather than a British dish: sage with duck and goose is a long-standing English pairing, and the sage-and-shallot stuffing here is a nod in that direction, dressed up with chestnuts and a French poulette sauce. Chestnuts appear constantly in the game and poultry chapters of the period; the American chestnut was still abundant when Ranhofer wrote, roughly a decade before the blight was identified in New York in 1904, though much of the chestnut sold for the table was imported European fruit. Dressing the trussed bird on a fried crouton and sending extra sauce round in a boat is consistent with the sequential, course-by-course service à la russe that had displaced service à la française in grand American dining rooms.