Baked Mallard*

Categories:	English   16th century   Pie   duck
Original Source:	Thomas Dawson, The Good Huswifes Jewell
Secondary Source:
Cook:	Rhonwen glyn Conwy
Meeting Date:	2005-02-20

To bake a Mallard
Take three or foure Onyons, and stampe them in a morter, then strain them with a saucer full of vergice, then take your mallard and put him into the iuyce of the sayde Onyons, and season him with pepper, and salte, cloves and mace, then put your Mallard into the coffin with the said iuyce of the onyons, and a good quantity of Winter savorye, a little tyme, and perselye chopped small, and sweete Butter, so close it up and bake it.

Steps

1. Making only a small pie, only one onion was used. It was chopped, put in a bowl, and then pressed with a potato masher. Verjuice was added to the mashed onion but it was not strained; we decided to leave the onion pieces as well as the juice in the pie.
2. The duck legs were boned (Muscovy duck bought at Whole Foods; if I had it to do again, I would use a breast instead of legs for ease of preparation) and the meat was chopped into small pieces, leaving enough fat that no additional butter was used (or needed, as it turned out).
3. The duck meat and fat was added to the onion with salt and pepper, a small handful of cloves, mace, thyme (dried), and parsley (dried); I can't remember if we had savory available or not. The ingredients were mixed in the bowl, then poured into the pie shell and baked.

Note

The results were very tasty!