THE ORIGINAL ‘RECEIPT’

MOCK DUCK

Mrs. C. C. Stratton.

Take the round of beefsteak, salt and pepper either side;  prepare bread and crackers with oysters or without, as for stuffing a turkey;  lay your stuffing on the meat; sew up and roast about an hour;  and if you do not see the wings and legs you will think you have a roast duck.

~Ladies of Toronto. The Home Cook Book. Toronto: The Musson Book Co. Limited, 1877.

THE UPDATED RECIPE

• 1 full slice of round steak (about ⅞-inch thick;  1 ½ to 2 lb.)
• salt and pepper to taste
• prepared “Dressing for Turkey”.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Put a rack in a small roasting pan, and pour in water to about ⅜-inch depth.

Prepare “Dressing for Turkey”.

Wipe the round steak, and slash the fat around the edge, to prevent it from curling.

Pound the meat with a mallet or the edge of a plate, to make it more tender.

Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper, lightly, on both sides.

Spread the dressing evenly over the surface of the steak, leaving a small margin around the perimeter.

Carefully roll up the steak (jelly-roll fashion), and secure with string and skewers, to hold it together.

Place the roll on the rack in the roasting pan, and cover it with a lid.

Roast in a preheated oven, at 375F, for 50 minutes, and then remove the lid, and reduce the oven temperature to 350F.

Roast about 20 minutes longer, basting occasionally. Check the internal temperature of the roulade to ensure it is 155F before removing it from the oven. The temperature will continue to rise to 165F when the steak roll rests.

When the meat is well-browned and tender, remove the Mock Duck from the oven.

Gravy may be made by adding a mixture of flour and cold water to the juices in the pan, and cooking this mixture until the starch thickens, on the top of the stove.  Stir constantly, to avoid having lumps in the gravy.

Serve Mock Duck hot, with potatoes, other vegetables, and gravy.

This is rich and delicious, even if you can’t “see the wings and legs”.

Yield:  4 to 6 servings

(Any leftovers of the Mock Duck may be thoroughly chilled and served thinly sliced.)

A note from Patricia: I normally only eat red meat a few times a year, but this recipe was appealing to me because it looked tasty and different. I also love stuffing, I love sage, and I knew that this would be easy to make gluten-free. I didn’t have a rack that fit in my roasting pan, but the internet told me that I could make a “rack” out of ribs of celery, so that’s just what I did, and it worked well. I used gluten-free bread, and had to make a special trip to the store for “savoury” as I didn’t have that spice in my collection (I’m a big fan now though!). The stuffing didn’t all stay put inside the roulade – some did escape during cooking – but all in all I’d say that it turned out beautifully. I whipped up a gravy with the juices using some arrowroot starch and VOILA! It was delightful and so flavourful. I ate a slice with some “Potato Puffs” and it was a perfect, hearty meal.

Mock duck is a particularly nice dish for luncheon.

~The Ladies of Welland Branch of the Women’s Institue. Good Things to Eat and How to Prepare Them. Welland: Office of the Tribune, 1908.

A note about “Summer Savoury” – After posting this recipe, I received a lovely email from Margaret Prouse, one of my aunt’s cohorts at the University of Guelph. Margaret resides on Prince Edward Island and gave me the following interesting tidbit of information about this herb:

“Summer Savoury is the preferred (perhaps only!) herb used to flavour bread dressing in the Atlantic provinces. I understand that Islanders who live ‘away’ are sure to pack summer savoury in their luggage when returning from a Maritime vacation.”