Duckling Soup

For the Home Baked Challenge for March ‘Fictional Food’ we have chosen to make duckling soup.  This soup is described in the passage below which is from ‘Physik’ the third book in a series about Septimus Heap a young wizard’s apprentice.  Jenna, his step sister, has just worked out how to follow Septimus through a mirror into a strange and unpleasant period in their history and has been mistaken for a missing princess.

The image of duckling soup made an impression and was the first thing to jump into my mind when considering fictional food.  Warning, it isn’t too pretty - to be read first by an adult - but at least Jenna’s duckling survives.

A gong sounded.

An expectant silence fell upon the hungry crowd.  This was the announcement of the first of fifteen courses.  They licked their lips, shook out their napkins and, almost as one tucked them under their chins.  The little Door Pages heaved open the doors, and a long line of serving girls in pairs, each one carrying two small silver bowls, filed in.  On entering the Ball room, the girls divided up, one line to serve each table.  In a tide of gray, the girls swept along the tables, each depositing a bowl in front of an eager diner.  The last two girls to enter the Ballroom made their way up to the dais, and soon Jenna too had a small silver bowl in front of her.

                Curious, Jenna looked down at the bowl and gasped in horror.  A young duckling scarcely big enough to be out of the egg, lay in a puddle of thin brown broth.  The duckling had been marinated in wine, plucked and its little naked goose bumpy body was slumped in the bowl.  Its head rested on a small ledge that stuck out from the special duckling bowl and gazed with terrified eyes at Jenna.  It was still alive.  Jenna was nearly sick on the spot.

                Queen Etheldredda, on the other hand, looked very pleased at the sight of her duckling.  The Queen licked her lips remarking to the young man on her left that this was one of her favorite dishes --- there was nothing like a tender young duckling freshly scalded in hot orange sauce.

                The gong sounded for the second time, announcing the arrival of a long line of boys carrying jugs of boiling hot sauce.  Jenna watched the boys enter the Ballroom two by two, one line going to the right and one to the left, each boy stopping to pour some of the orange sauce into the waiting bowls of the diners.  The two boys at the end of the line with the hottest jugs of sauce were ordered straight up to the dais.  Quickly, before the sauce boy reached her, Jenna picked the duckling out of her bowl and thrust it into her tunic pocked, where the tiny creature lay in the soft fluff at the bottom of her pocket rigid with terror.

                Jenna watched the boys thread their way through the throng.  Eyes down, trying to avoid spilling the brimming jugs of hot sauce, they stepped up onto the dais, where a burly footman hissed in their ears, “Tarry not, serve the Queen and Princess Esmeralda first.”  And so it was the when Jenna looked up to politely thank the boy who had just poured orange sauce into her duckling free bowl, she found herself looking into the haunted eyes of Septimus Heap.

For the soup we made this tomato soup and it looked a lot like orange sauce, the bread recipe is from the manual to breadmaker and we made the dough in there and proved it in the microwave.

The ingredients are

1 tsp yeast

250 g Strong Wholemeal Flour

250 g Strong White Flour

1 1/2 tbsp sugar

25 g butter

1 1/2 bsp salt

350 ml water