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Duckling, Bigarade
Singe, cut off head and legs from a tender five-pound duckling, draw, neatly wipe and truss. Place a mirepoix in a roasting pan, lay bird over. Season inside and all around with a heavy teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, baste with a little melted butter, pour quarter gill water in the pan. Set in oven to roast forty minutes, turning and basting once in a while. Remove, dress on a hot dish and untruss.
Remove rind from two sound oranges and cut oranges in halves lengthwise, then slice very finely, remove seeds, arrange slices around the duck. Pour a bigarade sauce over and serve.
N. B. Keep rinds of the two oranges for sauce.
A classic French roast duck written for a cook who already knows how to make bigarade sauce; the recipe assumes that knowledge and a butcher who sells birds with heads and feet on. A few conversions and one timing question need settling before you start.
- The birdA five-pound duckling is close to a standard Pekin (Long Island) duck sold today, which runs 4 1/2 to 6 lb. Supermarket ducks arrive drawn, singed and free of head and feet, so the first half of the first sentence is already done for you; you need only trim the neck flap and excess cavity fat and truss.
- A quarter gillA gill is half a cup, so a quarter gill is two tablespoons. It is there to keep the mirepoix from scorching in the first minutes, not to steam the bird, and it will need replenishing if the pan runs dry.
- MirepoixDiced carrot, onion and celery, often with a bay leaf and a little diced bacon or ham in the French kitchen of this period. Here it is a roasting rack and a flavour base for the pan juices, not a garnish.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Forty minutes for a whole five-pound duck points to a hot oven, and even so will leave you with rare breast and legs that are still tough and sinewy.
- The timing to reconsiderDuck legs need to reach roughly 175F before the connective tissue softens, which takes an hour and a half or more; the breast is at its best around 135-140F. Either roast longer and accept well-done breast, or carve the breast at temperature and return the legs to the oven while you finish the sauce.
- Bigarade sauceThe recipe names the sauce but does not give it, assuming the cook has it to hand. It is built on a brown sauce or reduced duck stock, sharpened with the juice of bitter oranges and finished with blanched julienne of the reserved rind. Blanch the rind in two changes of water or the sauce turns harshly bitter.
- The orangesTrue bigarade oranges are sour Sevilles, in season only in winter. For the sliced garnish around the dish, sweet oranges are correct and more pleasant to eat; for the sauce itself, use Seville juice if you can find it, or cut sweet orange juice with lemon.
- YieldA five-pound duck yields little meat for its weight. Figure three servings, four if the sauce and garnish are generous and there is a substantial side.
Bigarade is the French name for the sour or Seville orange, Citrus × aurantium, and a sauce bigarade is properly made with its juice and peel rather than with the sweet dessert orange. The pairing of duck with bitter orange is old in French cookery and is often traced, traditionally rather than on documentary evidence, to Italian influence at the French court; by the time this book was compiled the dish had hardened into a standard of the professional repertoire, which is why the recipe spends its words on singeing, trussing and the mirepoix and simply tells you to pour a bigarade sauce over. The instruction to save the rinds is the one line where the two halves of the dish are stitched together.