No. 2058

Canvasback Ducks with Orange Juice, Port Wine and Currant Sauce—Breasts

Filets de Canards Sauvages, Canvasback, au Jus d'Orange a la Sauce Porto et a la Gelee de Groseilles

Roast the ducks the same as for roasting (No. 2055) keeping them very rare; raise the two fillets, one from each side of the breast and cut each one into two lengthwise pieces; put them in a chafing dish, pour over some bitter orange juice, also a little game glaze (No. 398) and brown poivrade sauce (No 522); serve separately a sauce made with currant jelly dissolved in port wine, heating it in a bain-marie, then strained through a fine wire sieve, surround with half-heart-shaped croutons of bread fried in butter.

← No. 2057 Canvasback Ducks, Bigarade Sauce—Breasts Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2059 Mallard Ducks Roasted and Broiled— →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's service dish rather than a whole roast: the bird is roasted rare, the breasts lifted and finished tableside in a chafing dish with two sauces. Everything depends on the duck staying rare, since the fillets are heated a second time.

Sourcing the birdWild canvasback cannot be bought — sale of wild-shot migratory waterfowl is prohibited in the United States, and the bird is taken under seasonal bag limits. In practice this is a recipe for a hunter, or for farmed duck breast, which will be fattier and milder than the wild bird Ranhofer knew.
Roasting rareRanhofer sends the bird to a hot oven for a short time; he gives no thermometer readings. In a modern oven that translates to something like 450-500F for roughly fifteen to twenty minutes for a whole bird, pulling the breast at about 125F, since it will climb further in the chafing dish and wild duck breast turns liver-dry past medium-rare.
Bitter orange juiceThis is Seville (sour) orange, not the sweet eating orange. If you cannot find them, the usual stand-in is roughly two parts fresh orange juice to one part lemon; the point is acidity and a faint bitterness against the port sauce.
Game glazeNo. 398 is game stock reduced to a syrupy glace — hours of work for a spoonful. A well-reduced duck or veal demi-glace does the same job. It is there for body and gloss, so add it sparingly.
Poivrade sauceNo. 522 is a peppery brown sauce built on mirepoix, vinegar and crushed peppercorns, strained. Any good brown game sauce sharpened with vinegar and coarse black pepper will stand in; do not let the pepper go in early or it turns harsh.
The port and jelly sauceCurrant jelly melted into port over a bain-marie — never over direct heat, which will scorch the sugar and drive off the wine. Strain it while hot; it thickens as it cools and should coat a spoon lightly, not set.
Chafing dishIn Ranhofer's day this meant a pan over a table burner, often with a hot-water pan beneath it. A wide saute pan off direct heat, or a low burner, does the same thing: the fillets are being warmed through in sauce, not cooked further.
CroutonsWhite bread cut into half-hearts, fried in clarified butter until crisp, arranged around the rim. Cut and fry them in advance; they go soft within a few minutes of contact with sauce.
YieldTwo fillets per duck, each split lengthwise, gives four small pieces. The recipe states no yield; four pieces will stretch to two servings as one course among several.

A Little History

The canvasback was the most prized wild duck in nineteenth-century America, and its reputation rested on diet: birds wintering on the Chesapeake fed heavily on wild celery (Vallisneria), which was generally credited with giving the flesh its particular nutty, un-fishy flavor. Market gunning supplied restaurants in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York in enormous numbers, and a canvasback on the bill of fare signaled the same thing terrapin or diamondback did—the kitchen could get the best of the Atlantic seaboard. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, gives a number of canvasback preparations in The Epicurean (1894), which tells you how routinely the bird appeared. The market hunting that made it routine is often said to have collapsed the population, though wetland drainage and habitat loss are equally implicated; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended commercial sale of wild waterfowl in the United States, and canvasback has been a hunter's bird ever since. The treatment here—rare breast, bitter orange, port and currant jelly—is the classic French game service adapted to an American bird, and the sweet-tart jelly alongside roast wildfowl remains standard practice.