No. 2063

Redhead Ducks, Roasted and Broiled

Canards Sauvages a Tete Rouge Rotis ou Grilles

Prepare the ducks as for No. 2059, lay them on the spit to roast for fourteen to eighteen minutes, more or less according to their weight; salt over, remove from the spit and untruss and serve on a very hot dish, or they can be roasted in the oven, putting them into a baking pan; pour a little fat over and set them in a hot oven; they will take a few minutes longer to cook this way, then serve on a very hot dish. Hand round separately on a folded napkin some hominy or samp the same as for canvasback ducks (No. 2055). Cut up the ducks and serve on very hot plates. Four slices can be taken from each duck, two on each fillet and one or two of these served to one guest.

Broiled.—Have them prepared the same as the canvasback duck (No. 2054), then cook and dress exactly the same.

← No. 2062 Redhead Ducks a la Bareda Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2064 Redhead Ducks with Fried Celery →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a kitchen with a spit, a hot coal range and a supply of market-shot wild duck. The oven version he offers as an afterthought is the practical one today, and the short cooking time is the whole point of the dish.

The timing is deliberateFourteen to eighteen minutes on a spit leaves a wild duck rare to medium-rare at the breast. Ranhofer is not being careless; diving-duck breast toughens and turns livery the moment it goes past pink, which is why he cuts only the two fillets into four slices and serves them at once.
"Hot oven"Ranhofer gives no temperature; on modern equipment this is usually taken to mean a very hot oven, somewhere around 450F. The high heat is what sets the skin in the few minutes the bird is in the pan; a moderate oven will grey the breast before anything browns.
You will not buy a redheadWild waterfowl cannot legally be sold in the United States, so this is a recipe for a hunter. A farmed Pekin or Muscovy duck behaves quite differently u2014 far more subcutaneous fat, milder flesh u2014 and needs longer, gentler roasting than the times given here.
The cross-referencesNo. 2059 is the preparation stage for the birds. No. 2054 and 2055 are the canvasback entries, which supply the broiling method and the hominy garnish. The page cannot be cooked from in isolation.
Hominy and sampBoth are hulled-corn preparations; hominy is treated with alkali, and samp is the coarser, broken or cracked grade. Ranhofer has them cooked plain and handed round separately on a folded napkin rather than dressed as a seasoned side dish.
Very hot dish, very hot platesRepeated twice in a short entry for a reason. Wild duck carries little fat, and what there is congeals fast; a cold plate turns the slices tepid and tallowy before the second guest is served.
YieldFour slices per bird, one or two per guest u2014 so a single duck serves two to four as a course, and the legs and carcass are not part of the service. Keep them for stock or a salmis.

A Little History

This entry comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in a long run of wild-duck recipes because that is exactly what a Gilded Age restaurant menu demanded. The canvasback was the celebrated bird of the American table, prized for feeding on wild celery in the Chesapeake, and the redhead u2014 another diving duck with much the same diet and range u2014 was its close and cheaper understudy, which is why Ranhofer simply refers the cook back to the canvasback method rather than writing it out again. Hominy or samp as the accompaniment is a distinctly American touch in an otherwise French-titled book, a hulled-corn preparation adopted from Native and colonial practice that Delmonico's served with wild fowl as a matter of course. Ducks like these reached the kitchen through the market hunters who supplied city restaurants by the barrel; the commercial trade in wild waterfowl was ended in the United States by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and with it the world in which a chef could order redheads by weight.