No. 283

Puree of Wild Ducks, [canvasback, Redhead or Mallard] a la Van Buren

Puree de Canards Sauvages [Canvasback Tete Rouge ou Mallard] a la Van Buren

Roast two ducks for eighteen or twenty minutes, remove the fillets, and break up the bones, putting them into a saucepan with a split knuckle of veal and a quarter of a pound of ham, also two cut up tomatoes, and one onion with four cloves in it. Moisten with four quarts of broth, cook for two hours and strain the broth; pound the fillets after removing all the skin, with the same quantity of cooked hominy, and two ounces of butter, dilute this with the broth, season with salt and nutmeg, and heat it up without boiling. Just when ready to serve incorporate into it, four ounces of good butter, and beat the broth up well with a spoon, until all the butter is melted; then pour it into a soup tureen with a garnishing of celery cut in dice, and blanched and cooked in some consomme, also quarter inch squares of brioche dried in the oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's game purées are essentially two recipes stacked: a long game-and-veal stock, and a butter-enriched purée finished off the heat. The order matters more than the timings.

The hinge: never let it boilOnce the pounded fillets and butter go in, the soup is held below a simmer. Boiling curdles the butter emulsion and turns the meat purée grainy and grey. Hold it at roughly 170-180F and serve promptly.
Roasting the ducksRanhofer gives no oven temperature. Eighteen or twenty minutes would leave wild duck breast well short of cooked through, and the fillets are pounded and warmed again in the soup afterwards. If you are uneasy about rare game, take the finished soup to 165F and hold it there rather than roasting the birds longer.
Knuckle of vealA split veal knuckle is the joint end of the leg, sawn open for its gelatin. Ask a butcher for veal knuckle or shank bones, sawn; two pounds is about right. It is what gives the strained broth body.
Four quarts of broth"Broth" here means a plain stock rather than a finished consomme; the recipe distinguishes the two, since the celery garnish is cooked separately in consomme. The four quarts will lose volume over the two hours' cooking, so expect noticeably less strained liquid than you started with.
Cooked hominyHominy is nixtamalized corn. Nineteenth-century usage covered both whole hulled kernels and coarser grits; whole cooked kernels are the likelier reading here. Cook dried hominy until fully tender, or use canned hominy simmered soft, and pound it warm with the duck so the two combine smoothly.
Mounting with butterThe final four ounces are whisked in off the fire, exactly as for a sauce. Cut the butter cold and add it in pieces; if the soup is too hot it will break and pool.
The brioche croutonsQuarter-inch dice of brioche dried in a low oven until crisp but barely coloured; Ranhofer gives no temperature. They go into the tureen as a garnish at the end rather than being stirred through, where they would dissolve.
YieldRanhofer gives no yield; the quantities point to a first course for a sizeable table. Halving the stock quantities works, but keep the ratio of two ducks' fillets to an equal volume of hominy.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, filled The Epicurean (1894) with dishes named for the restaurant's patrons and for public figures; who this Van Buren was is not stated, and the name belonged to a prominent New York family as well as to a president. Canvasback was the most prized American wild duck of the nineteenth century, its reputation resting on the wild celery beds of the Chesapeake where the birds fed and which were said to sweeten the flesh; the diced celery garnish here may well be a nod to that, and the redhead (tête rouge) and mallard are offered as substitutes. Market gunning for canvasback was intense, and commercial trade in wild waterfowl was closed off by federal law in the early twentieth century, after which the bird passed out of restaurant cooking almost entirely. The hominy is the other quietly American note in a French construction: Ranhofer used it where a Parisian kitchen would more likely have reached for rice or bread.