In defence of duck à l’orange

Duck à l’orange is so deliciously retro, it’s almost a cliché of kitsch. It seems hard to believe that there was a time when it was genuinely regarded as elegant, or subtle-flavoured, let alone exciting; that it wasn’t always a byword for naff.

But as its name suggests, duck à l’orange had chic origins. And perhaps (contrary to its name) Italian ones. The French may have made it one of their defining dishes, but it’s often suggested that it may have Italian roots: brought to the French court by Catherine de Medici when she married the Duke of Orléans, the son of the King of France, in 1533. Catherine brought a brigade of Florentine cooks with her to the French court, and they introduced a host of Italian dishes that became French classics: salsa colla turned into béchamel sauce, carabaccia soup was renamed French onion soup, crespelle were rebranded as crèpes – and papero all’arancia became better known to us as duck à l’orange.

Having said all this, more likely is that the dish originated in the Middle East, where combining meat and fruit was the norm, before coming to Europe on trade routes.

Its heyday came in the 20th century, of course. Duck à l’orange was an extremely popular choice in the 1960s and 1970s, gracing restaurants and dinner party tables alike. Its popularity may have been its downfall.

I blame Julia Child. In 1961, Child published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and brought classical French cuisine to the American masses. Now, I am an unabashed Child fan, and her book truly transformed the way the US cooked. But her greatest skill was knowing her audience: she was adamant that her recipes must be achievable for her American readers.

I wonder if this is where it all went wrong. In her otherwise authentic version of the dish, she calls for sweet oranges instead of the traditional Seville oranges, which are very hard to get hold of in the US. Her book popularised the dish in America, and from there it was a slippery slope to those bright orange, syrupy sauces, the colour and texture of chip-shop curry sauce.

And we’ve been getting it wrong ever since. The correct sauce to serve with duck à l’orange, sauce bigarade, is almost unrecognisable from what we’ve come to expect.

Sauce bigarade is a proper old-school sauce, the kind you’d find in professional kitchens full of stressed, be-toqued chefs and enormous bubbling pans. It combines a rich, dark, deeply savoury meat stock with a ‘gastrique’ – a caramel made with vinegar, which brings both sweetness and sourness to the sauce. Most importantly, the sauce bigarade features Seville oranges, the bittersweet Spanish orange.

The Seville orange, most commonly used in the UK for marmalade, has a distinctive and compulsive bitterness and sourness that is ideal alongside rich, gamey, big-flavoured duck, and the finished sauce is a gorgeous, glossy balancing act of sweet, savoury, sour and bitter. Seville oranges are enjoying their brief season right now: they appear on the shelves at the end of December, and are gone by March. So this is the perfect time to try your hand at a proper duck à l’orange.

And while you’re at it, ditch the pan-fried duck breasts in favour of a whole roasted duck, with luscious rendered fat and crisp, tight skin. Not only is it a truly beautiful meal to carry to the table, and the traditional way to prepare the dish, but the flavour is unparalleled, and the duck perfectly cooked.

If you can’t get hold of Seville oranges where you are, or have a sudden hankering for duck à l’orange in July – the combined zest and juice of a navel orange and a lemon will be a perfectly respectable substitute.

Serves two, plus leftovers

Takes 20 minutes

Roasts 1 hour 30 minutes

– 2kg whole duck

– 2 Seville oranges (or 1 navel orange and 1 lemon)

– 250ml beef stock

– 50g granulated sugar

– 30ml water

– 30ml red wine vinegar

– 1 tbsp cornflour

1. Pare the zest from the oranges, and slice finely into long, thin lengths. Place the zest in a small pan of cold water, and bring up to the boil, simmer for a couple of minutes, then strain.
2. Preheat the oven to 230°C. Prick the duck all over with a skewer, piercing the skin but not the flesh. Place in a large roasting pan, generously season the duck with salt, and roast for 30 minutes before reducing the temperature to 150°C and roasting for another hour. If your duck comes with giblets, roast the neck too, but remove that after the first 30 minutes, then place in a saucepan with the beef stock and add an additional 200ml of water. Leave to simmer gently while the duck cooks.
3. Carefully pour the fat from the pan (retaining it for excellent roast potatoes). Cover the duck loosely with foil and rest for 15 minutes.
4. To make the sauce, put the sugar and 30ml of water in a small saucepan, and simmer until the mixture is syrupy and dark brown. Add the vinegar slowly, being careful not to splash yourself with the caramel. Add the beef stock to the pan and then the juice of the oranges (or the orange and lemon). Strain the sauce, return it to the pan, and bring it to a simmer. Make a slurry of the cornflour with a splash of cold water, add this to the sauce, and let it boil for a couple of minutes. Finally add the zest and any resting juices from the duck.
5. Decant the sauce into a jug, and serve the duck whole to the table, or carve the breasts away from the carcass, and slice them thinly.