ISSUE 39, FOWLS, Part 5: Duck
Duck with Turnips, an old Huguenot Dish
Here is a glimpse of content from Taste the State, South Carolina’s Signature Foods, their Recipes and Stories, from the University of South Carolina Press (October 2021). Co-written with Kevin Mitchell: https://uscpress.com/Taste-the-State
Duck
Hunters had decided preferences when it came to wildfowl—rice birds were tasty but not much sport; turkeys were crafty and a challenge in the field, but could be tough and lean, unless it had been feeding on a grain field; rail was both tasty and challenging but gave rise to very few preparations. So for many a woodsman duck reigned as the most versatile, flavorful, and plentiful game bird to be encountered in the autumn. Whether Red Head, Widgeon, Wood Duck, Scaup or one of the breeds that visit and soon depart, the wild ducks excited the hunter, and challenged the cook. While the canvasback, a duck more proper to the Chesapeake, stood first in culinary repute, among restaurateurs and hoteliers, the home cook in South Carolina cherished the wood duck and the Red Head. They were processed quickly—plucked and gutted—with some effort made to extract the shot. Then the duck was hung up in a cool protected place to age. The classic Carolina cookbooks had instructions how to roast the duck. Here is one such recipe.
To Roast a Duck A Southern Lady, The Centennial Receipt Book (1876)
Let your duck hang always for a day, and longer if the weather is cold enough; stuff with sage and onion stuffing. Put it before a clear fire, turn and baste it frequently; let it roast about an hour. Just before it is done, draw it nearer the fire; dredge it with a little flour, baste it with a a little butter to crisp the skin. Make some brown gravy in the dripping pan, and pour it in the dish around the bird (29).
While this method serves equally for domestic and wild ducks, another method was reserved almost exclusively for game birds: they were trussed and impaled on a spit that rotated before an open fire. Because of the mystique of game, wild duck was one of the few things prepared hearthside or before a outdoor fire long after the advent of the cook stove in the 1840s. If a wild duck was old and tough it would be rubbed in vinegar and pepper and then hung to age. The duck would then be parboiled before roasting. In the last half of the twentieth century the old vinegar rub was supplanted by a marinade—lemon juice and soy sauce being popular.
Carolinians had decided opinions on which ducks one could stuff without ruining their flavor and which not. Good stuffed: redhead, canvasback, mallard, black duck, pintail, and wood duck. Do not stuff the bufflehead, bluebill, baldpate, mottled, Florida duck and shoveller. Stuffings included onions, celery, apples, sausage, and stale bread. In the Dutch Fork duck might be stuffed with sauerkraut and roasted.
Another preparation thought to have originated among the Carolina Huguenots was duck with turnips (canard aux navets). Numbers of recipes survive, the chief difference being the treatment of the turnips—are they simply roasted in the duck fat, or are they butter roasted elsewhere, half of them mashed, half of them whole and the mashed turnips softened with cream. The following version hails from the “My Mother’s Cook Book” column of the Lancaster News:
Wild Duck with Turnips “My Mother’s Cook Book,” Lancaster News (October 24, 1919)
Cut the bird in neat piece for serving. Slice one large onion and one carrot; melt four tablespoonfuls of sweet fat in a saucepan, add the vegetables; cook until nicely browned. Strain off the fat, add a cupful of stock and one bay leaf, place in the over and cook for one hour. Peel eight turnips, cut four of them into quarters and fry in hot butter until brown; put them with the duck to finish cooking. Boil the other turnips until tender in salted water; mash and rub through a sieve; put them in a saucepan with one tablespoonful of butter to season and salt and pepper to taste; add a quarter of a cup of cream and heat again. Take up the duck, dish in on the hot mashed turnips and arrange the fried quarters around it. Strain the saue from the duck, thicken with flour, season and serve in a sauce boat (8).
In the twentieth century Duck a la orange became popular, first as a restaurant dish, then as a home preparation in the 1920s. The orange sauce was a litmus test of kitchen skill—if one used flour and the juice and pulp of an orange, the intensity of the fruit’s color would diminish, even if one managed to keep the sauce lump-free. If you used arrowroot starch as the basis for the sauce, the color remained intensely vibrant.
Of other duck dishes that emerged during the twentieth century, wild duck bog, made like chicken bog is probably the most endearing. Dallon Weathers, an event cook, popular in the 1970s and 80s, became famous for this old style duck pilau made of few ingredients: duck, fatback, onions, celery, rice and butter.
Sources: Theresa C. Brown, “To Roast a Wild Duck,” “To Roast an English Duck,” Modern Domestic Cookery (Charleston: Edward Perry, 1871), 61-62.A Southern Lady, “To Roast Duck,” Centennial Cook Book (Charleston, 1876), 29. “How to Cook Christmas Poultry and Game,” Columbia Record (December 16, 1927), 7. Eddie Meier, “Species of Duck Not to Stuff,” The State (December 26, 1956), 5-B. “Magnificent Duck is Perfect Entrée,” Columbia Record (November 18,, 1968), 23. Harriott Fauette, “Hunter Plays Fare Game,” Columbia Record (February 6, 1978), 31. Julius M. Reynolds, Sunrise on the Santee: A Memoir of Waterfowling in South Carolina (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002).