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Duckling, Rouennaise
Singe, cut off neck and feet of a nice, tender, fat duckling, neatly draw and remove gall bag from liver, then finely chop liver and heart. Place both in a saucepan with three finely chopped shallots, a tablespoon butter, and fry for five minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile. Add two tablespoons demi-glace, five tablespoons bread crumbs, an egg yolk, a half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper and half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley. Sharply mix with wooden spoon while heating for three minutes, then stuff duckling with preparation. Truss duck, place in a roasting pan, season with a teaspoon salt, spread a little butter over breast, set to roast in a brisk oven for thirty minutes, then remove.
Cut into very small pieces three chicken livers and one sound onion, place in a braising pan with a teaspoon butter and briskly fry for five minutes. Lay duck in pan, pour in a tablespoon brandy, half gill claret, a gill each demi-glace and tomato sauce, season with a saltspoon cayenne and boil for five minutes. Cover pan and set in oven forty-five minutes, frequently basting meanwhile; remove, untruss, dress on a hot dish, strain sauce through a cheesecloth over duck and serve
A two-stage bird: roasted hard, then finished in a covered braise with a liver-thickened red wine sauce. The measurements are hotel-kitchen shorthand and need translating.
- The hingeThe sauce is the dish. It is built from chopped chicken livers and onion fried in butter, then deglazed with brandy and claret and moistened with demi-glace and tomato sauce; straining it through cheesecloth at the end is what turns a gritty liver mash into a smooth, glossy coating. Do not skip the straining, and press the solids firmly to get the body out of them.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of claret is 1/4 cup and a gill each of demi-glace and tomato sauce is 1/2 cup each. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: three saltspoons of pepper in the stuffing is 3/4 teaspoon, and a saltspoon of cayenne in the sauce is 1/4 teaspoon, which is assertive but not wrong.
- Brisk ovenRead "brisk" as roughly 400-425F for the initial thirty-minute roast. The recipe gives no temperature for the covered stage that follows; a moderate 325-350F is a sensible modern reading, since a very hot oven under a lid for forty-five minutes will reduce the sauce too far.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thickened in the classic manner. Good commercial demi-glace concentrate or a heavily reduced brown stock both work; two tablespoons in the stuffing is there for richness and binding, not liquid, so use it thick.
- Drawing the birdA supermarket duck arrives drawn, so buy the giblets separately or use extra chicken livers and heart. The gall bladder warning still applies to any whole liver you buy in — a nicked gall bladder makes everything it touches bitter and there is no rescuing it.
- DonenessThirty minutes roasting plus forty-five covered brings a 4-5 lb duckling through, but check the thigh joint rather than trusting the clock; birds of this size vary. The stuffing contains liver and egg yolk and should reach 165F, so probe the cavity as well as the meat.
- FatPrick the skin before roasting and pour off the rendered fat before the braise begins, or the finished sauce will be an inch of grease over a spoonful of glaze.
- YieldOne duckling serves two generously, three at a stretch. The recipe makes roughly a cup of finished sauce.
Anything called rouennaise points to Rouen in Normandy and its distinctive ducks, which were traditionally killed by smothering rather than bleeding so the flesh stayed dark and gamey — the basis of the famous pressed duck of the Norman restaurants. The classic sauce rouennaise is a red wine and shallot reduction finished with pureed raw duck liver, never boiled; here the liver work has been moved into a stuffing and a strained braising sauce, a practical adaptation of the idea for kitchens without the true Rouen bird. The International Cook Book belongs to that world of professional restaurant-trained chefs writing for households with a cook, which is why demi-glace and tomato sauce are assumed to be standing by rather than made from scratch. The saltspoon and gill measures belong to a period when such units were still in ordinary use, before standardized American cup measures had fully displaced them.