To roast Widgeon, Duck, Teal, or Moorhen.
The flavour is best preserved without stuffing; but put some pepper, salt, and a bit of butter in the birds. Wild fowl require to be much less done than tame, and to be served of a fine colour.
The basting ordered in the foregoing receipt takes off a fishy taste which wild fowl sometimes have. Send up a very good gravy in the dish; and on cutting the breast, half a lemon squeezed over, with pepper on it, improves the taste.
Or stuff them with crumbs, a little shred onion, sage, pepper, and salt, but not a large quantity, and add a bit of butter. Slice an onion, and put into the dripping pan, with a little salt, and baste the fowls with it till three parts done; then remove that, and baste with butter. They should come up finely frothed, and not be overdone.
An excellent sauce under that article.
Duck to boil.
Choose a fine fat duck, salt it two days, then boil it slowly, and cover it with onion sauce made very white, and the butter melted with milk instead of water.
To roast duck: stuff or not, and serve with gravy.
Duck Pie.
Bone a full grown young duck, and a fine young fowl of a good size. Season them both well with mace, pepper, salt and allspice. Put the fowl within the duck, and a calf’s tongue that has been pickled red, and boiled, within the fowl. Make the whole to lie close. The skin of the legs and wings should be drawn inwards, that the body may lie smooth, Put the birds into a raised pie, or small piedish, and cover it with a thickish paste. Bake in a slow oven to eat cold.