duck a l'orange

For the longest time my go-to cookbook was Fanny Farmer's. It was originally published in 1896 as The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer. I just found a site that offers a pdf of the original Fanny Farmer's Cookbook. It is a much pared down version of the current one, edited by Marion Cunningham (February 7, 1922 – July 11, 2012 ), who was a California-born award-winning American food writer. Cunningham was responsible for the 1979 and 1990 revisions of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

For Valentine's Day dinner we decided to make this. Duck is a favorite in my family, everybody enjoys it with gusto. We eat it about once a month but it was extra special with the orange sauce. It really set off the meat. My husband made the duck, since he usually makes the meat for our meals, and I made the l'orange.

This is what the original cookbook says about duck a l'orange:

Roast Wild Duck
Dress and clean a wild duck and truss as goose. Place on rack in dripping−pan, sprinkle with
salt and pepper, and cover breast with two very thin slices fat salt pork. Bake twenty to thirty
minutes in a very hot oven, basting every five minutes with fat in pan; cut string and remove
string and skewers. Serve with Orange or Olive Sauce. Currant jelly should accompany a
duck course. Domestic ducks should always be well cooked, requiring little more than twice the
time allowed for wild ducks.

Orange Sauce
1/4 cup butter
Few grains cayenne
1/4 cup flour
Juice 2 oranges
1 and 1/3 cups Brown Stock
2 tablespoons Sherry wine
1/2 teaspoon salt
Rind of 1 orange, cut in fancy shapes

Brown the butter, add flour, with salt and cayenne, and stir until well browned. Add stock
gradually, and just before serving, orange juice, Sherry, and pieces of rind.

Here is what Cunningham writes:

Orange Sauce
5 oranges
2 lemons {I only used one lemon}
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons wine vinegar
2 cups beef broth {I used vegetable broth}
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons red current jelly {I used prune butter - since that is what I had}
1/4 cup dry white wine

1. Using a vegetable peeler remove the zest from 2 oranges and 1 lemon. Cut zest into thin strips. Bring a pan of water to boil and steep the zest for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.

2. Squeeze the juice from the 2 oranges and 1 lemon. Set aside.

3. Peel and cut the rest of the fruit free from the membranes. Put sections in a bowl and set aside.

4. In a small heavy bottomed sauce pan cook the sugar over medium-high heat. Caramelize it by shaking the pan over the heat so the sugar turns golden brown, without burning it. Add vinegar, fruit juices, and boil rapidly until liquid reduces by half. Stir in broth and simmer for 5 minutes.

5. In a small bowl dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons water. Add it to the sauce along with the jelly {prune butter}, stirring until sauce is clear {my sauce was not clear, but that didn't seem to hurt it any} and thickened.

6. When duck is roasted, move it to a warm platter. Pour off the fat from the roasting pan and place it over a burner {here is where my husband and I differed. Does she mean place the pan, without the fat, onto the burner? Or does she mean place the fat over the burner?}. Add the wine, scrape up the bits from the bottom of the pan, and boil rapidly for 1 minute. Strain into sauce.

7. Sprinkle the duck with the fruit rind strips, surround with fruit sections, and pour enough of the rich brown sauce over to glaze the duck, serving the rest in a sauce boat.