to roast a pair of ducks
(from Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery, by Eliza Leslie, 1838)
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Ingredients:
2 ducks, plucked and cleaned
Stuffing, made with:
green sage leaves
1 medium onion, chopped and parboiled
butter
salt & pepper
browned flour
Served with:stewed cranberries
green peas
For Canvas-back ducks, omit the stuffing and add:cayenne pepper
large wine-glass of claret or port
For wild ducks and teal, add:a carrot for each bird
Serve with:
orange-sauce, made with:
4 large sweet oranges
sugar
Instructions:
After the ducks are drawn, wipe out the inside with a clean cloth, and prepare your stuffing. Mince very fine some green sage leaves, and twice their quantity of onion, (which should first be parboiled,) and add a little butter, and a seasoning of pepper and salt. Mix the whole very well, and fill the crops and bodies of the ducks with it, leaving a little space for the stuffing to swell. Reserve the livers, gizzards and hearts to put in the gravy. Tie the bodies of the ducks firmly round with strings, (which should be wetted or buttered to keep them from burning,) and put them on the spit before a clear brisk fire. Baste them first with a little salt and water, and then with their own gravy, dredging them lightly with flour at the last. They will be done in about an hour. After boiling the livers, gizzards, and hearts, chop them, and put them into the gravy; having first skimmed it, and thickened it with a little browned flour.
Send to table with the ducks a small tureen of onion-sauce, with chopped sage leaves in it. Accompany them also with stewed cranberries and green peas, if in season.
Canvas-back ducks are roasted in the same manner, omitting the stuffing. They will generally be done enough in three quarters of an hour. Send currant jelly to table with them, and have heaters to place under the plates. Add to the gravy a little cayenne, and a large wine-glass of
claret or port.
Other wild ducks and teal may be roasted in about half an hour. Before roasting, parboil them with a large carrot inside their bodies. This will draw all the fishy or sedgy taste that may be about the ducks. Then throw away the carrot, and lay them in fresh water.
You may serve up with wild ducks, &c. orange-sauce, which is made by boiling in a little water two large sweet oranges cut into slices, having first removed the rind. When the pulp is all dissolved, strain and press it through a sieve and add to it the juice of two more oranges, and a little sugar. Send it to table either warm or cold.
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