Duck as food

Lore & Background

Wild duck breeds have been hunted and cooked for thousands of years. The mallard is the commonest wild duck and the one most eaten worldwide. Other wild ducks commonly eaten in Europe include the pintail, teal, scaup, shoveler, widgeon, and pochard. In North America, the most highly rated wild duck is the Canvasback, named for the light canvas colour of its back. Wild duck is usually served rare, with an old saying that a mallard should walk through the kitchen, a widgeon should run slowly through, and a teal should rush through.

Reader's Guide

Domestication of ducks began over 2,000 years ago in China and was practiced in classical Rome. In Europe and North America, almost all domesticated breeds descend from the mallard duck, though they differ greatly in size and appearance. Principal breeds for cooking include Aylesbury, Long Island, Muscovy, Nantes, Norfolk, Peking, and Rouen. Duck features in many regional cuisines: in China, Peking duck is prepared by pumping air under the skin, blanching, glazing, and roasting; in India, duck is important in Northeast Indian cuisine, such as Assamese dishes with white gourd, laixak, or bamboo shoots; in Korea, oritang is a duck soup with vegetables; in Southeast Asia, Balinese dishes include duck soup with banana stem and smoked whole duck; in Britain, duck is traditionally served with green peas at Whitsuntide, with sage and onion stuffing and apple sauce; in France, duck plays a major role, with dishes such as Caneton à la rouennaise, where the cooked bird is squeezed in a special press to extract juices. Duck is less central to the cuisines of Italy and Spain.

Did You Know?

• Duck has been domesticated for more than two thousand years, with domestication beginning in China.
• The Long Island duck breed is descended from white Peking birds imported from China in the 1870s.
• In French cuisine, the dish Caneton à la rouennaise requires the cooked bird to be squeezed in a special press to extract all its juices.