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Teal Ducks, Orange Sauce
Prepare the ducks, but serving a cold orange sauce instead of the currant jelly.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it borrows the method from the roast teal recipe printed just above it and swaps the accompaniment. Everything that matters is in the sauce and in not overcooking a very small wild bird.
- Read the parent recipe first"Prepare the ducks" refers to the preceding teal entry, whose method is followed unchanged. This line alters only the condiment served alongside.
- What teal areTeal are the smallest of the dabbling ducks, dressing out at roughly 6 to 10 oz. Figure one bird per person as a course, two if it is the centre of the meal.
- SourcingWild teal cannot legally be bought or sold in the United States under migratory bird law; they reach the table only through a licensed hunter. Farmed substitutes are much larger and fattier, so treat any duck from a market as a different bird and adjust timing accordingly.
- Roasting temperatureSmall wild ducks want a high heat, 15 to 20 minutes and no longer; the breast is at its best around 130-135F, still rosy.
- Wild duck is leanUnlike a farmed duck there is little subcutaneous fat to render, which is why the older recipes call for barding with bacon or basting hard. Without it the breast dries before the bird colours.
- The cold orange sauceThe recipe gives no formula. One plausible reading is a Cumberland-type relish along the lines of currant jelly melted with orange and lemon juice and shreds of blanched zest, then chilled. Made cold, it would be served in a boat rather than spooned over the hot bird.
- Oranges have changedThe classic duck orange was the bitter Seville or bigarade, sharper and more aromatic than a modern eating orange. If using navels or Valencias, add lemon juice to bring the acidity back.
- Resting and carvingRest the birds five minutes only — a teal loses heat fast. Serve on fried bread or croûtons to catch the juices, since the sauce itself is not a gravy.
Duck with bitter orange is a long-established European pairing, associated with the bigarade orange of French kitchens, where its acid cut the richness of waterfowl. Currant jelly was a common American accompaniment to game birds in the late nineteenth century, which is why this entry reads as a substitution rather than a new dish, the cold orange sauce being offered as an alternative to the jelly assumed in the parent recipe. Teal appear often in books of this era because they were abundant market game before federal law ended commercial traffic in migratory birds.