No. 2054

Canvasback Ducks Broiled

Canards Sauvages Canvasback Grilles

Clean nicely and split through the whole length of the back, open entirely to have them perfectly flat, wipe, trim and season with salt and pepper; coat over with oil and put them inside a double boiler sufficiently thick not to have them squeezed too tight; broil over a brisk fire for eight or ten minutes and as soon as done, dress on a buttered half-glaze sauce (No. 413) into which has been added butter, lemon juice and chopped parsley.

← No. 2053 Brant Ducks with Cauliflower Villeroi—Roaste Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2055 Canvasback Ducks Roasted Garnished with Homi →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's method is sound and fast; almost everything that needs translating is vocabulary and heat. Read the vessel note first, because "double boiler" here is not what it sounds like.

"Double boiler" means a hinged grillAlmost certainly "double broiler" — a two-sided wire broiling basket that clamps the flattened bird and lets you turn it in one motion; it has nothing to do with a bain-marie. A hinged fish grill or two wire racks bound together does the same job; the instruction "sufficiently thick not to have them squeezed too tight" means leave the breast un-crushed.
Splitting through the backThis is spatchcocking. Cut down either side of the spine from tail to neck, remove it, then press the bird flat, cracking the breastbone if needed. Flat is the whole point: uneven thickness is what ruins a broiled duck in ten minutes.
"A brisk fire"Live hardwood coals burning hot and clear; the book gives no temperature. A gas grill run wide open, or a broiler element with the bird 3–4 inches beneath it, gets you there. Eight to ten minutes only works at that intensity.
DonenessWild diving ducks are lean and dark and go liver-flavoured and dry past medium-rare; the breast is usually pulled at about 125–130F internal, at which point the legs are still underdone.
Sauce No. 413Ranhofer's half-glaze is demi-glace: brown sauce reduced with stock until it coats a spoon. A good reduced duck or veal stock stands in. Butter, lemon juice and parsley go into the sauce; add the butter with the pan barely warm or the sauce breaks.
Sourcing the birdCanvasback cannot be bought. Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 no wild native waterfowl may be sold in the United States, and canvasback in particular carry tight bag limits and closed seasons. A legally taken wild duck from a hunter, or a farmed Pekin, Muscovy or mallard, is what this recipe gets made with today; farmed birds are fattier and will flare on a hot grill, so keep a cool zone.
YieldA canvasback runs about 2½–3 lb live, so dressed it is nearer 1½ lb: one bird serves one, or two as part of a longer menu. A farmed Pekin at 5 lb, split and broiled, serves three or four.

A Little History

The canvasback (Aythya valisineria) was among the most expensive wild birds in nineteenth-century America, and its reputation rested on a diet: on the Chesapeake and the Susquehanna flats it fed heavily on the roots of wild celery, Vallisneria, which is written into its scientific name and was generally credited with the nutty, un-fishy flavour that separated it from other divers. Chesapeake market hunters shipped them north to the city markets by rail, and Delmonico's — where Charles Ranhofer was chef from 1862, with a break in the later 1870s, until 1896 — put them on the menu at prices that made them a byword for luxury; The Epicurean (1894) devotes a run of consecutive numbers to them, broiled, roasted, and garnished with hominy in the Maryland manner. Market hunting on that scale is why the recipe now reads as a historical document: the trade in wild waterfowl was closed down by a sequence of federal measures culminating in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and canvasback numbers have been managed cautiously ever since. The technique, though, is the ordinary treatment for a small lean bird — flattened, oiled, seared over coals, and laid on a buttered brown sauce sharpened with lemon.