Roasted duck with fruits: tradition, memory and Majorcan cuisine

PalmaThey had installed the perch in the kitchen. The feathered ducks swayed there, hanging from a hook. A macabre curtain from which the animals had just dripped the last drops of blood. The scorched skin gave off a metallic and penetrating smell that mixed with the scalded feathers. Those powerful animals that organized the coop with their scandalous comings and goings looked like others, stripped and sad, staring at you from that small head with cloudy eyes.

The duck is one of the poultry with the most gastronomic tradition in the world. Unlike chicken, with a milder meat, it stands out for its fatty, honeyed meat with an intense flavor, qualities that many cultures have made synonymous with festive or haute cuisine. Its domestication dates back thousands of years, mainly from the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), the ancestor of most current domestic breeds. France is probably the European country that has contributed most to its prestige. In the southwest, especially in Gascony and Périgord, it is inseparable from confit, a preservation technique based on slow cooking the thighs in their own fat. From fattened animals, magret is also obtained, the breast of a duck destined for the production of foie gras, a product as appreciated gastronomically as it is controversial due to the fattening system and breeding conditions.

Discreet presence

In the Balearic Islands, the presence of duck has been very discreet and has never had the prominence of chicken or pork. It is generally cooked stewed or braised, almost always with white wine and flavored with spices and onions. In the Menorcan recipe books of the 18th century, we find two examples. One of them is in Art de la cuina, by friar Roger, where it describes how to prepare braised ducks, a laborious dish that should be surprising. To prepare it, the bird is half roasted on grills, then cubes of bacon, onions, and the duck are sautéed in lard. Everything is covered with white wine, spices are added, and a pastry lid is made to cover the mouth of the pot. This cooking technique allows all the aromas to be retained and results in extraordinarily tender meat. Once cooked, the meat is served on toast and covered with the sauce. In the Caules recipe book, contemporary to the previous one, a duck with white wine and vinaigrette sauce is collected. This preparation will be a little simpler, only that the duck is left hanging and plucked for a whole day, stuffed with onions and salt. This same formula will be collected almost entirely by Pedro Ballester in De re cibaria (1923) in a recipe titled ‘To stew a wild duck’, a name that leaves no doubt about the origin of the duck.

In Mallorca, one of the first references appears in the Llabrés recipe book, from the 19th century, with duck with turnips, a direct relative of one of the most traditional preparations in Catalan cuisine. We cannot forget either the duck with broken olives that Pere d’Alcàntara Penya includes in Cuina Mallorquina, probably one of the most representative recipes of our cuisine and later reproduced in numerous recipe books. Later, the influence of French cuisine during the 19th and 20th centuries popularized dishes like duck with orange among affluent households and restaurants, a recipe about which I already wrote in a previous article based on the recipe book by Maria del Carme Oliver Espinosa. Today, however, we recover another preparation described by Antoni Tugores in Memòria de la cuina mallorquina: a splendid roast duck with fruits from Binissalem.