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October 31
Menu: Clear Soup; Braised Duck with Turnips; Riced Potatoes; Goblin Cakes; Orange Salad; Nuts; Spinach; Candies; Custard Souffle, Vanilla Sauce; Coffee Braised Duck with Turnips-Wash and cut 2 carrots, 2 stalks celery, 2 turnips, 1 onion in large pieces, put them in pan on these place 4 slices ham, then 1 duck trussed for roasting, 1 bunch parsley, 2 cups water, dust nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Lay Criscoed paper over top, then lid, and simmer 1 hour or till duck is tender. a Melt 3 tablespoons Crisco in pan, add 1 dozen small peeled turnips and toss till they are golden color. When duck is cooked, remove strings and skewers. Put on hot dish, and arrange turnips round. Season gravy and strain over duck.
A French canard aux navets written as a pot-roast, with the shortening the book was published to sell standing in for butter or duck fat. The bones of it are sound; the timing and the fat both need attention.
- The hinge: an hour is not enoughThe hinge: watch the tenderness, not the clock -- The recipe's own "or till duck is tender" is the operative instruction, and an hour will often not get there: a trussed duck sitting on a bed of vegetables in two cups of liquid usually wants 1½ to 2 hours of gentle simmering, or about the same time in a low oven if you prefer to move it there. Check that the thigh joint moves freely. Duck legs are generally better taken to about 175-180F, past the 165F safe point, because the connective tissue needs the extra heat to soften.
- Crisco and what to use insteadCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold, though today's formulation is not the original one. Butter or the duck's own rendered fat will glaze the turnips better and taste of more; use 3 tablespoons of either.
- "Criscoed paper"A greased paper laid directly on the food under the lid — a cartouche. Parchment cut to the diameter of the pan, buttered on the underside, does the same job of holding steam against the bird.
- Skim before you strainA duck gives up a great deal of fat into two cups of water. Let the cooking liquid settle a few minutes and spoon the fat off, or the strained gravy will be slick. Reducing what remains by a third concentrates it usefully.
- The hamFour slices of cured ham season the whole pot. Taste before adding salt at the end, and if the ham is a modern wet-cured supermarket product, expect it to contribute water as well as salt.
- Small turnipsA dozen small peeled turnips means young ones an inch or two across, not baby turnips from a bunch and not chunks of a large swede. Older winter turnips can be pared into even pieces; blanch them briefly first so the browning does not outrun the cooking.
- Duck size and yieldA whole duck of about 4½ to 5½ lb, roughly the size of a common market bird, serves three or four people. Much of the weight is frame and fat.
- Nutmeg"Dust nutmeg" means a scrape from a whole nutmeg, not a measured spoonful. It is a period habit with braised poultry and game and is easy to overdo with pre-ground.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, was a cookbook produced to teach American households what to do with a new hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening that was neither butter nor lard. It offered menus organized by the day of the year — this duck belongs to the November 1 dinner — and Crisco tends to figure in the dishes somewhere, here as the fat for glazing the turnips and for greasing the cartouche. The dish itself is much older than the shortening: duck with turnips is a standing partnership in French cooking, the sweet root cutting the richness of the bird, whether it appears as "canard aux navets" or plainly as duck with turnips. Its placement at the start of November may owe something to the season, since duck and winter roots both belong to that end of the year.</td>