No. 2065

Ruddy Ducks a la Hamilton

Canards Sauvages, Ruddy a la Hamilton

Prepare and cook the ducks the same as for roasted (No. 2066); detach the fillets without taking off the skin and range them at once in a sautoir, pour over some reduced espagnole sauce (No. 414) and a little good sherry; roll them in this off the fire and strain the juice of a lemon over. Dress the fillets in a circle on a poached and unmolded forcemeat border placed on a dish, and fill the insides with a garnishing of truffles, mushrooms, olives and cut up foies-gras; cover both fillets and garnishing lightly with the sauce and serve more of it separately after straining it.

← No. 2064 Redhead Ducks with Fried Celery Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2066 Ruddy Ducks, Roasted →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's plated dish that assumes a brigade: a roast bird, a mother sauce already made, and a forcemeat border moulded in advance. The cooking of the duck itself takes minutes; everything else is assembly.

The hinge: the sauce never simmersThe fillets are rolled in the espagnole off the fire. They come from a rare-roasted bird and are only meant to be coated and warmed through; set them over heat and the breast meat greys and toughens within a minute or two.
Sourcing the birdWild ruddy duck is not sold commercially in the United States, the market trade in wild waterfowl having been ended by migratory bird law, and it is not among the species that may legally be sold in Britain, though some other wild duck may be during the open season. Unless you have a hunter in the family, work with farmed duck breast or with teal, which is closer in size and character.
Scale of a ruddy duckA ruddy is a small diving duck, roughly a pound whole, and yields two modest fillets. Ranhofer's circle of fillets implies several birds per dish; count two ruddies or one teal per person, or one large farmed magret for two.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan — a modern sauté pan or wide skillet. Wide matters more than deep here, since the fillets need room to be turned in the sauce in a single layer.
EspagnoleRanhofer's No. 414 is a brown veal stock thickened with brown roux and reduced with mirepoix and tomato — a day's work in itself. A well-reduced brown veal or duck stock, mounted lightly, stands in without embarrassment.
The forcemeat borderA fine veal, chicken or game forcemeat poached in a ring mould, turned out, and used as a wall for the garnish. A modern kitchen can poach it in a savarin mould or a ring of foil in a bain-marie at 325F until set, about 30 minutes for a standard ring.
Garnish proportionsTruffles, mushrooms, olives and foie gras are all rich, and the olives are the salty element; keep them few and rinsed, or they will run away with the sauce, which is already reduced.
Lemon and sherryBoth go in at the end and both are corrective — the sherry against the reduction's depth, the lemon against the foie gras. A dry oloroso or amontillado suits this better than a sweet cream sherry.
YieldAs written this is a dressed centrepiece for a course rather than a main plate. Ranhofer gives no serving count, so any figure is an estimate; something in the region of six to eight within a longer menu.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its wild duck chapter reflects a period when Chesapeake and Long Island waterfowl arrived at the market by the barrel. The ruddy duck — small, fat, and fed on wild celery and pondweed — was among the market birds prized after the canvasback and redhead, and it has more than one entry of its own in Ranhofer's numbering. Dishes styled "à la Hamilton" in this book follow the house habit of naming preparations for patrons, clubs and occasions rather than for places or techniques; Ranhofer rarely explains the reference, and the attribution is best treated as traditional rather than documented. The commercial trade in these birds that made such a recipe possible was ended by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which is why the dish is now essentially unbuyable at any price.