Duck Club Sandwiches

A cross-reference rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have the book's chicken club sandwich in front of you, and that you know what a club sandwich looked like in 1910. Both need filling in.

• What the base recipe isA club sandwich of this period usually means buttered toast, mayonnaise, crisp bacon, lettuce and sliced tomato, with the sliced meat as the main layer, often built as a double-decker on three slices and cut into quarters. Two-slice versions also appear in period sources, and the book's own chicken club recipe governs here.
• Duck meat means leftoversDuck meat means cold cooked duck -- The recipe assumes sliced cold duck, which in practice often meant the remains of a roast bird. Figure on roughly 4 oz of picked meat per sandwich, sliced thin across the grain from the breast, with any shredded leg meat mixed in.
• Chill before slicingWarm duck breast tears rather than slices. Refrigerate the cooked bird until firm and the slices will hold together in the sandwich instead of sliding out.
• Skin and fatDuck skin turns flabby once cold and should be pulled off unless you crisp it separately in a dry pan. The meat is already rich, so the bacon is optional here in a way it is not with chicken.
• Cut the richnessDuck wants acid. Mixing a little Dijon or a few drops of lemon into the mayonnaise, or adding a layer of thinly sliced pickle or watercress, keeps the sandwich from going heavy in three bites.
• If starting from raw duckRoast a whole duck to 165F at the thigh. Duck breast fillets are commonly cooked to 130-135F and rested, but that is below the 165F recommended for poultry, so cook to 165F if you want the safe margin. Only the whole-bird route gives you the quantity of cold meat this recipe assumes.
• YieldOne duck yields roughly 1 lb of usable picked meat, enough for about four sandwiches.