Chocolate Sea-Duck (actually Cornish Game Hen) with Livers, Mushrooms and Chestnuts (1692)

Staying in the world of early European chocolate, as promised, I take a step toward the savoury.  This week’s adaption is a bird in chocolate sauce with livers, mushrooms, and chestnuts.  I first came across this dish in the English cookery book I was working with last week - The Court and Country Cook (1702). As I mentioned then, this text comes from translating much of the content in two earlier books by Frenchman François Massialot. He was cook to the French king’s brother and his recipes were set down as Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois (1691) and Nouvelle instruction pour les confitures, les liqueurs et les fruits (1692).

In Le cuisinier are instructions for “Macreuse en ragoût au Chocolat,” rendered in the English version as “A Sea-duck with Chocolate in Ragoo.” A ragout was then, as now, a hearty sauce or stew with a variety of ingredients. Macreuse translates directly as “scoter” today.  A scoter is a smaller duck and most species at least winter near coastal waters, so “Sea-duck” seems appropriate in the period.  (To make things a little confusing, macreuse in French today can be one of a couple cuts of beef from the foreleg of the animal.)

For my attempt at this, I could not get sea-duck or, unfortunately, any game bird of that size.  I ended up going with what I could find in time, a Cornish game hen, which is not in fact a game bird.   The ragout also calls for truffles and some mushrooms that I could not get in time or cheap enough.  So, my version is a bit more “inspired by” than usual but I really enjoyed the result. I present an adaption of the base recipe from Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois, combined with instructions for drinking chocolate used in the dish from Nouvelle instruction, then some notes on my interpretation. 

Recipe

Ingredients 

“Boisson” de Chocolat (Drinking Chocolate)  

• 250ml (about 1 cup) water
• 28g (about 1 oz.) unsweetened chocolate, preferable 100% cacao, chopped finely 
• 28g (about 1 oz.) sugar 
• Pinch of chili flakes
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp ground cloves
• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon 
• ½ tsp orange flower water (optional)

Bird

• 1 Cornish Game Hen (about 650g) (See Notes)
• Olive oil (for coating bird)
• Salt 
• Pepper 
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 bouquet garni (I used thyme, rosemary, sage, and parsley tied in cheesecloth)
• 1 recipe of “Boisson” de Chocolat (see above) 

Ragout

• 14g package of dried mixed wild mushrooms (See Notes)
• 1 tbsp butter
• 150g chicken livers, separated and cut into bite-size pieces
• 300g (about 2/3 lbs) white or button mushrooms
• 115g (about 20) chestnuts, cooked, peeled, and sliced (See Notes)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Preheat your barbeque on medium heat (See Notes)

In a small heat-proof bowl, cover your dried mushrooms with boiling water and allow to stand.  

Drinking chocolate

Bring one cup of water to a boil in a small pot.

Add the chocolate and stir until melted and combined.

Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Add the rest of the ingredients and stir to combine.

Reduce heat to low, cover and let cook for 15 minutes. 

Set aside.

Bird 

Wash your bird, then thoroughly dry it with paper towel.

Rub with olive oil and season with salt and pepper inside and out.

On your barbeque, grill each side of the bird until it takes on a good char.

Place the bird, breast side up, in a large saucepan or medium stockpot with the bay leaf and bouquet garni.

Pour over the drinking chocolate and cover.

Over high heat, bring to a boil.  

Reduce the heat to low and let simmer until the meat of the thickest part of the thigh reaches 80°C (about 180°F). This will take about 45 minutes.

Ragout

While your bird is cooking, melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium high heat. 

Add your chicken livers and fry, stirring, until coloured all over.

Add regular mushrooms and fry until they start to release their moisture.  If your pan is initially dry, add a little of the water from the bowl your dried mushrooms are in. 

Once the mushrooms are partially cook and there is liquid in the pan, add all the water from the dried mushrooms.  

Chop those now rehydrated mushrooms roughly and add to the pan.

Add the chestnuts.

Reduce heat to medium low, cover and cook for a half hour. 

Set aside, keeping warm.  

Assemble your dish by putting the ragout on a platter and placing your bird on top.  

Pour the chocolate sauce from your saucepan, into a serving container, discarding the bay leaf and bouquet. Serve alongside. 

Notes

A 1698 edition of Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois.

The English translation from 1702

This recipe comes originally from Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois and in it Massialot says “vous ferez un peu de Chocolat” or in the English translation “a little Chocolate is to be made.”  “Making” chocolate generally meant the drink in the period.  Le cuisinier does not say how to make this drinking chocolate but Massialot’s other book Nouvelle instruction pour les confitures, les liqueurs et les fruits has a section devoted to it, as I mentioned in my last entry.  The cook writes that chocolate was generally obtained as a solid, but it included other ingredients beyond the base cacao.  The portion of my recipe that deals with the drinking chocolate is then a combination of two parts of Massialot’s section on this import from the Americas. First, I needed to add the additional ingredients that he says make up the solid chocolate: vanilla (I used extract instead of pods), sugar, cinnamon, chili flakes (“le Poivre de Mexique”) and cloves. Orange flower water is one of the optional ingredients he mentions, along with musk and ambergris; I had some so I added it. In another paragraph, he says you grate the solid into boiling water and add more sugar if it doesn’t have enough for you; then it is further boiled and then frothed for drinking.  I did not froth it, but I used the rest of the instructions to finish my drinking chocolate.  

1715 edition of Nouvelle instruction
pour les confitures, les liqueurs et les fruits. 

In the first edition of Nouvelle instruction, one of the additional ingredients for the solid chocolate base is “l’Achiote.”  Achiote today can be a paste with annatto seeds as its base; it can also be used interchangeably with annatto itself, which is probably what Massialot is referring to.  Annatto seeds are bright red and come from a tree called bixa orellana.  Native to Central and South America, it was used as dye and paint, then later as a food additive, before it was spread around the world by Spanish colonisers. Achiote paste today has other ingredients like cumin, pepper, coriander, oregano, cloves, and garlic, in addition to the seeds. The taste of the annatto seeds themselves is said to be a bit sweet, peppery and a little bitter.  I also could not get this ingredient in time, but my adaption is not wholly unfaithful because later editions of Nouvelle instruction, for whatever reason, omit this from the list of chocolate solid additives. Those same later editions do add more extensive instruction for processing the cacao plant itself and more chocolate recipes.

The first edition of Nouvelle Instructions which includes
achiote as one of the chocolate solid ingredients.
Compare the 1734 edition below.

The achiote is absent but also notice the change in heading 
to reflect that these later editions include instructions to
make "faire" the chocolate solid as well as the drink.

Massialot gives almost no quantities in his Macreuse recipe, the exception being that he calls for “un quarteron de marons [chestnuts].” As I have mentioned before, this could be a quarter of a French livre (pound) or a quarter of a hundred count of something. I went with the former, but it was actually close to the latter as well.  I did try to match the quantities provided for the drinking chocolate: he calls for a French once of chocolate, which is somewhere around a modern US ounce, and an equal amount of sugar. For the remaining ingredients, in the chocolate and in the bird dish as a whole, the quantities were down to my judgment. 

If you can find a game bird - a mallard or wood duck, or even pheasant - it would be a great replacement for the Cornish game hen I used. Cornish game hens are pretty much small-bred chickens and I chose it for its size and availability. The darker gaminess you get from those other birds would probably work even better against the sweet and bitter of the chocolate.

The instructions for the ragout in Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois call for “les foies, champignons, morilles, mousserons and truffles.”  The “foies” or livers probably meant the liver from the sea-duck, the closest replacement I had available were chicken livers.  “Champignons” are regular mushrooms which I used.  For cost, I did not used “morilles” – morel mushrooms – or “truffles.”  “Mousserons” also called fairy rings are somewhat common in Europe, but I could not get them in time.  To sort of replace those last three fungi, I used the dry mixed wild mushrooms. 

The period recipes say that your bird is “blanchir” in French - or “broil’d a little” in the English translation - over coals before it is put in the pot with the chocolate.  I used a barbeque to do something similar and it added a great taste: the char with the sweet and spices in the chocolate was actually a kind of BBQ sauce.  Alternatively, you could briefly broil it in an oven or sear all sides of the bird with some oil in a frying pan.

A modern ragout would be wetter than what I ended up with, I believe the chestnuts suck up a lot of the moisture. Having made a few significant other replacements, I decided not to add some stock and a thickening agent but those would give it a richer consistency. That said, adding the remaining chocolate cooking liquor/sauce does add some moisture in the completed dish. 

Despite using a Cornish game hen, I was really pleased with the results of this recipe. The chocolate flavour taken on by the outside of the bird works extremely well with the barbeque sear.  The added chocolate sauce helps add that to the rest of the bird. I will probably make a barbeque sauce based on those ingredients, maybe bumping up the chili flakes or replacing them with fruitier peppers.  The meat stays moist due to the initial broil and the relatively slow cook in liquid.  The ragout/side of livers, chestnuts and mushrooms hits all the notes you would expect - iron, earthy, and sweet. I would really like to do this again, especially with a game bird. 

We will probably leave chocolate for a bit this coming week and maybe try to find a period sallet (salad), since it might actually be a bit warm where I am.