Numerous are the names given to this duck-based recipe presented in two parts. This specialty of Normandy is whipped up according to strict rules that must be respected in order to earn its name, a process followed to a T at Quai de la Tournelle. The duck must first be suffocated, cooked bloody, with the wings lifted and the carcass pressed to extract the blood that will then be put into the sauce. This preordained process has been carried out more than a million times under the octagonal cupola of the restaurant “La Tour d’Argent”.
It was in the 19th century that Frédéric Delair, born in Rouen, brought us what today remains the undisputed speciality of one of the most prestigious restaurants in Paris. Located in Rive Gauche on the Quai de la Tournelle, everyone knows that the maître d’hôtel might as well be this French duck itself, codified within the very walls of this restaurant. This historic dish has been served to many an equally historic figure such as Edward VII Prince of Wales in 1890, or Emperor Hirohito in 1921. The surprising particularity of this glorious piece of fowl at La Tour d’Argent remains the numbering of each duck sacrificed during the cutting ceremony that has taken place ever since 1890. Each week, 250 ducks are prepared by the chefs of La Tour d’Argent. King Alfonso XIII dined upon number 40,312, while in early 2013 this decadent palace where pleasures of the body and soul unite celebrated its millionth duck consumed.
Lauded by writer and food journalist Courtine in the early 1900s, turned into a poem by Lauzières de Thémines, and today prepared under the watchful eye of a “Maître Canardier”, the recipe for canard au sang has traversed the ages. It’s a veritable gastronomical formula, an ode to traditional French cuisine. “As Claude Monet painted, with the hindsight of a judge and the precision of a mathematician, opening ahead of time with one steady hand all the perspectives of taste.” wrote Léon Daudet to describe the virtuosity of the masters of his day. La Tour d’Argent possesses not only an incredible view of Notre Dame cathedral as well as Paris’ Ile de la Cité, but also a piece of French history on its plate. As immortalized by the Marquis de Thémines’ final verse: “Let us all go to the Quai de la Tournelle, if we want to swoon while eating.”
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