No. 2053

Brant Ducks with Cauliflower Villeroi—Roasted

Canards Sauvages Brant Rotis aux Chouxfleurs Villeroi

Brant ducks are prepared the same as blackhead ducks and when roasted, dress them on a long dish; garnish around with cauliflowers a la Villeroi (No. 2716), serving a separate poivrade sauce (No. 522) into which incorporate half as much fresh butter.

← No. 2052 Blackhead Ducks Roasted or Broiled Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2054 Canvasback Ducks Broiled →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand: the bird is roasted as at No. 2052, and almost everything of interest happens in the two cross-references. Reading it as a menu assembly rather than a set of instructions makes it usable.

What a brant isBrant (Branta bernicla) is a small dark sea goose, not a duck, running about 3 lb live and rather less dressed. Its flesh is usually described as leaner and stronger than mallard, and it feeds largely on eelgrass and marine plants. Wild brant cannot be bought; a small farmed goose or two mallards will stand in, with the understanding that the flavour is milder.
The roast itselfNo. 2052 covers blackhead (scaup) roasted or broiled; the details are in that entry, not here. In modern practice wild waterfowl takes a hard, short roast in a hot oven, barded with fat pork or bacon, so the breast stays rare, since it dries and turns livery if taken past medium-rare; a goose-sized bird wants the breast at about 130-135F.
Cauliflower a la VilleroiVilleroi means coated, not sauced. Cook the cauliflower in florets until just tender, dry them well, dip in a thick reduced allemande or béchamel stiff enough to cling, chill until set firm, then crumb and deep-fry at 350-360F. Chilling the coated florets thoroughly is the hinge: warm sauce slides off in the fryer.
Poivrade sauceA brown peppercorn sauce built on mirepoix, vinegar and a game or veal stock reduction, strained. Ranhofer's instruction to incorporate half as much fresh butter means half the volume of the finished sauce, whisked in off the heat, cube by cube. It must not boil after the butter goes in or it will break.
Dressing the dishThe long dish is a platter, not a technique. Carve the breasts and legs, arrange down the centre, ring the fried cauliflower around the edge, and pass the sauce separately so the crumb coating stays crisp.
YieldOne brant serves two generously as a course; the recipe gives no yield, so scale the number of birds to the table.
Legal noteWild migratory waterfowl in North America may not be sold commercially. Brant, canvasback and scaup all appear in this chapter because in 1894 market gunning was still legal and city restaurants bought them by the barrel.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its wild-duck chapter is a small monument to the market-gunning era: blackhead, canvasback, brant, redhead and teal were shipped in from Chesapeake Bay and Long Island by the crate and sold openly. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended that trade, which is why the chapter now reads like a catalogue of things a restaurant cannot serve. The Villeroi preparation, generally traced to the ducs de Villeroy of the French court, was a standard nineteenth-century device for turning a plain vegetable into a garnish with body and crunch, and it does real work here against the soft, dark meat of a sea goose. The poivrade finished with a great deal of butter is the older, richer style of game saucing, before lighter reductions came in.