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Caneton a L'Estragon
Cut off the head and legs, draw and neatly wipe the inside of a fat five-pound duckling (Caneton). Singe and truss; place a mirepoix, in a large saucepan; lay the bird over the mirepoix Season with two teaspoons salt and one teaspoon white pepper, adding one ounce melted butter. Place the pan on a brisk fire and let cook for fifteen minutes, turning over once in a while. Add two tablespoons flour to the mirepoix, stir well with a spoon; pour in one-quarter pint claret, half pint beef broth and half pint tomato sauce. Mix well again, cover the pan, let boil for ten minutes.
Have three branches fresh or preserved tarragon, pick off all the leaves, put them aside and add the stalks to the duck. Place the pan in a hot oven for forty-five minutes, turning the duck once in a while. Remove, untruss, place on a hot dish and keep warm. Place the pan on the fire, skim the fat from the surface of the sauce and briskly boil for eight minutes. Strain the sauce through a sieve into another saucepan, add the tarragon leaves and ten sliced mushrooms, then let the sauce reduce to half pint, mixing occasionally meanwhile. Pour the sauce over the duck and serve.
A classic French braise: the duck is browned on the stovetop over its aromatics, then finished in the oven in a claret-and-tomato sauce. The tarragon is handled in two stages, and that is the part most likely to go wrong.
- Tarragon in two partsThe stalks go in for the long cooking and are strained out; the leaves go into the finished sauce at the end. The aromatic oils in tarragon are volatile, so adding all of it at the start would leave a duller, hay-like flavour by serving time.
- MirepoixNo quantity is given because it was assumed knowledge: roughly diced onion, carrot and celery, about two cups total for a bird this size, often with a bay leaf and a little diced bacon or salt pork. Here it acts as a rack as well as a flavour base, keeping the duck off the pan bottom.
- "A hot oven"Roughly 400-450F. The duck has already had fifteen minutes of hard browning, and the liquid keeps things from scorching; forty-five minutes at that heat renders the fat well.
- Liquid measuresA quarter pint of claret is 1/2 cup, and each half pint is 1 cup, so the braise carries 1 cup beef broth and 1 cup tomato sauce. Claret means dry red Bordeaux or any dry red.
- The ducklingA five-pound Pekin duck is still the standard supermarket bird and needs no substitution. Modern ducks arrive drawn and headless, so the first sentence reduces to patting the cavity dry, pulling out any loose interior fat, and trussing.
- Skim seriouslyA five-pound duck releases a great deal of fat, and the instruction to skim before the final boil is not optional. Let the pan sit off the heat a minute so the fat gathers, then spoon it off; the sauce will not emulsify properly otherwise and will taste greasy.
- DonenessThe recipe times the bird rather than testing it. Braised duck leg is generally tender somewhere around 175-185F at the thigh joint; check rather than trusting the stated forty-five minutes.
- The mushroomsTen sliced mushrooms go into a sauce reducing to one cup, so they should be sliced thin and will release water. Expect the reduction to take longer than the recipe implies once they are in.
- YieldServes three to four. Carve the duck rather than serving it whole if the sauce is to go around.
Caneton a l'estragon is one of the small family of French braises built on the pairing of duck with tarragon, an herb whose sharp anise edge cuts the richness of the bird in the same way that orange or cherry does in the better-known versions. The method here reads like a restaurant line cook's: brown hard, wet with wine and broth, hold the bird warm while the sauce is skimmed, strained and reduced to order. Caneton means a young duck rather than a mature one, and the distinction mattered more then than now, when nearly all commercial ducks are slaughtered young. The tomato sauce in the braising liquid suggests the recipe belongs to the late-nineteenth-century professional repertoire, when a prepared tomato sauce was, by many accounts, kept ready to hand and found its way into a great many dishes that had once been thickened with brown roux alone.