No. 2057

Canvasback Ducks, Bigarade Sauce—Breasts

Filets de Canard Sauvages, Canvasback, Sauce Bigarade

Prepare and cook the canvasback ducks the same as roasted (No. 2055); when still very rare, remove and raise the two fillets and divide each one into three pieces. Put them in a chafing dish with a little melted game glaze (No. 398), as much butter and the juice of half a lemon, roll them well in this to glaze and dress on a bigarade sauce (No. 435).

← No. 2056 Salmis of Canvasback Ducks Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2058 Canvasback Ducks with Orange Juice, Port Win →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A finishing method rather than a full recipe: Ranhofer assumes you have already roasted the birds per No. 2055 and can pull two of his cross-referenced sauces off the stove. Everything hinges on the ducks coming out of the oven underdone, since the breasts get a second turn in hot butter and glaze.

Undercook on purposeThe birds are pulled while "still very rare" because the fillets are reheated and glazed in the chafing dish. If they are roasted to medium in the oven, the second cooking takes them to grey and dry. Wild duck breast is at its best around 125-130F at the center.
Roasting the birds firstNo. 2055 is not reproduced here, so its heat and timing cannot be checked from this page; the practice for lean wild waterfowl is a short spell in a very hot oven. Lean wild waterfowl has almost no fat cap, so the heat must be fast and the resting brief.
Game glaze (No. 398)A game stock reduced to a syrupy, spoon-coating glace, not a gravy. A well-reduced duck or veal demi-glace stands in; it should be thick enough to cling when the pieces are rolled in it.
Bigarade sauce (No. 435)Named for the bitter Seville orange (bigarade), not the sweet dessert orange. The classical version is a brown game or duck sauce sharpened with the juice and blanched zest of bitter oranges, sometimes with a little caramel and vinegar. Sweet orange juice alone will read as cloying; add lemon or a splash of vinegar to compensate.
Chafing dishHere it means a shallow pan over a spirit burner at the table or on the range — essentially a sauté pan. The glaze, butter and lemon are swirled to emulsify and coat; it should take under a minute, and the pan must not be hot enough to break the butter.
Sourcing the birdCanvasback cannot be bought. In the United States wild waterfowl is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and may not be sold, so the only lawful supply is a licensed hunter's own take in season. Any farmed duck breast will work with this treatment, though a domestic Pekin is far fatter and needs its skin rendered slowly before the glazing step.
YieldTwo fillets cut in three gives six pieces per duck — one bird per person as a course, or two ducks serving three if the sauce and garnish are generous.

A Little History

Canvasback was among the most prized American game birds of the Gilded Age dining room, valued because the ducks feed on wild celery in the Chesapeake and are said to take a distinctive flavor from it; Delmonico's, where Charles Ranhofer was chef, built menus around them in season. The Epicurean (1894) devotes a run of consecutive numbers to the bird — roasted, in salmis, with orange juice and port — which tells you how routinely it appeared and how much a kitchen was expected to do with one carcass. Pairing it with bigarade, a sauce generally traced to French cookery for domestic duckling, is characteristic of the book's approach: an American ingredient handled in Parisian grammar. The commercial market that made such menus possible was closed by the migratory bird protections of the early twentieth century, and canvasback largely vanished from American restaurant lists thereafter.