Ducks with Juice of Oranges

History

This recipe is printed as 'To dress ducks with juice of oranges' in Mary Randolph's The Virginia House-Wife: 'Take two ducks, pick and clean them nicely, make a forcemeat of the livers, bacon chopped, green onions, sweet herbs and parsley, mushrooms, and bread crumbs, fill the ducks with it, sew them up, cover them with slices of bacon and paper, roast them nicely; when done... strain the gravy from the pan, add to it the juice of two large oranges, a little salt and cayenne pepper, boil it a few minutes and pour it over'. The Virginia House-Wife was first published in 1824 and is considered the first regional American cookbook. Its recipes drew on many traditions, including British, Spanish ('gaspacho'), West Indian (gumbo), East Indian (curry), Scottish, and French (macarons). Randolph developed her cooking over the thirteen years she spent running a Richmond boardinghouse. The kitchen labor and culinary knowledge behind the book were substantially those of enslaved Black women, whose West African cooking traditions shaped the food though the book never credits them. The record does not document a specific origin, a court pedigree, or any class symbolism for this individual duck-and-orange recipe.

Ingredients

• ducks
• duck livers
• bacon
• butter
• green onions
• sweet herbs
• parsley
• salt
• pepper
• mushrooms
• gravy
• orange juice
• shallots

Instructions

1. The ducks being singed, picked and drawn, mince the livers with a little scraped bacon, some butter, green onions, sweet herbs and parsley, seasoned with salt, pepper and mushrooms.
2. These being all minced together, put them into the bodies of the ducks and roast them, covered with slices of bacon and wrapped up in paper.
3. Then put a little gravy, the juice of an orange, and a few shallots minced into a stew pan, and shake in a little pepper.
4. When the ducks are roasted, take off the bacon, dish them, pour your sauce with the juice of oranges over them, and serve them up hot.