Roasted duckling, rare-cooked, carved, with the pressed carcass yielding a blood juice bound with red wine and butter, perfumed with shallot. A prestige dish of 19th-century Norman and Parisian tables.

Why this dish? Tocqueville, elected representative from Normandy and deeply attached to his province, could not ignore the great dish of Rouen, the Norman capital near his lands. The Rouen duckling, domesticated game from the Seine marshes, was the ceremonial dish served at dinners where the political alliances of the July Monarchy were forged.

Here is a dish of which our Normandy can be proud, and which I gladly served to my guests. The duckling is roasted on the spit, still rare, for it is from its very blood that the nobility of the sauce is drawn, heightened with a good wine and a garden shallot. It is carved at table, before the guest's eyes, and the master of the house takes some pride in conducting the operation himself. Believe me, nothing loosens tongues at a dinner like this dish, and I have heard many confidences about the state of our country over it.

How it was made : The Rouen duck, raised suffocated to preserve its blood, once yielded a sauce bound with a duck press, a ceremonial instrument. Before the codification of the late 19th century, versions were already served in Norman houses: pressed carcass, blood, and liver binding a red wine jus.

The contemporary twist : Without a duck press, bind the sauce with pan-seared livers and serve over lacquered duck breast slices, with a purée of Cotentin apples roasted in butter.

Alexis de Tocqueville · Charactorium