No. 2069

Teal Ducks a la Pontchartrain, Breasts

Filets de Canards Sauvages, Sarcelles a la Pontchartrain

Lift the breasts from four very plump raw teal ducks; keep on the skin and score this lightly; marinate these in oil with cut up chives, parsley leaves, salt, mignonette and lemon juice; let them remain in this for two hours and just when ready to serve, pour two tablespoonfuls of oil in a sautoir, heat it up and put in the breasts; place it on a good fire, turning the pieces over when done on one side; drain and dress in a circle with half heart-shaped croutons between each piece, having them the same size as the breasts; cover the whole with a well-reduced buttered espagnole sauce, (No. 414) straining into it the juice of an orange. They can also be broiled, after scoring, seasoning and coating over with oil, then put into a double broiler without pressing and when cooked dress in a circle with croutons between each fillet and the same sauce as above poured over the whole.

← No. 2068 Teal Ducks, Roasted Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2070 Salmis of Teal Ducks a la Harrison →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer assumes a cook who can source wild teal and who already has espagnole standing by. The technique itself is quick, and the whole thing hinges on not overcooking breasts that weigh a couple of ounces each.

The hinge: cook them rareA teal breast fillet is about the size of a large egg and perhaps 2 oz. It needs roughly 2 minutes on the skin side and a minute on the other, to about 125-130F internally, then a short rest. Cooked through it turns liver-flat and dry, which is why Ranhofer specifies a good fire and a fast turn.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked pepper, usually white, crushed rather than ground. Ordinary coarse-ground black pepper is a fair substitute.
SautoirA shallow straight-sided saute pan, not a saucepan. Any heavy skillet that holds eight small fillets without crowding will do.
Espagnole, No. 414The book's foundation brown sauce, built on brown roux, veal stock and mirepoix and reduced over hours. A well-reduced demi-glace, finished off the heat with cold butter and the strained orange juice, gets you to the same place. Add the juice at the end so it does not cook out.
Which orangeNineteenth-century "orange" in a game sauce often meant a sour bigarade or Seville. If you use a sweet navel or Valencia, add a squeeze of lemon to keep the sauce from turning cloying.
Double broilerA hinged wire grill that clamps the food between two grids so it can be flipped over the coals in one movement. The instruction not to press is presumably to avoid squeezing out the juices that carry wild duck's flavour.
CroutonsBread cut into half hearts the same size as the fillets. The recipe does not say how to cook them; fried in butter until crisp is the usual treatment in this book. Cut them before you cook the duck; there is no time afterward.
YieldFour teal give eight fillets. That is a first course for four, or a main course for two if you are generous.
If you have no tealTwo boneless duck breasts from a domestic Pekin, halved lengthwise, take the same marinade and sauce, but they carry a thick fat cap. Start those skin-side down in a cold dry pan to render the fat and skip the oil.

A Little History

Teal a la Pontchartrain comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a long section on wild duck that assumed a market where canvasback, redhead and teal were sold by the brace like poultry. The name is one of the French kitchen's aristocratic garnish labels, generally traced to the Phelypeaux family, counts of Pontchartrain and ministers under Louis XIV; in nineteenth-century usage it attached loosely to dishes finished with a reduced brown sauce and a sharp fruit note rather than to any single fixed formula. What dates the recipe most is not the sauce but the supply: commercial market hunting fed restaurants like Delmonico's until the Lacey Act of 1900 and then the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 shut the trade down, and wild teal have since been available only to hunters and their friends. The orange juice strained into the espagnole is the same instinct that produced duck a l'orange, sourness cutting the iron-rich flavour of a bird that lives on the wing.}