Canard à la presse

Canard à la presse is a duck dish built around a piece of equipment: a roasted bird is carved at the table, and its carcass is crushed in a silver duck press to extract the blood and marrow, which are then whisked into a sauce of the duck's own liver, cognac and wine and poured over the sliced breast. It is the signature of La Tour d'Argent in Paris, which has served it under the name canard au sang since the 1890s and numbers every duck, past the million mark by the early 2000s, handing the diner a card with the number. The dish is one of the last survivors of tableside haute cuisine, performed by a maître d'hôtel in a dining room rather than a cook in a kitchen, and the press itself, a vertical screw in a cast and plated housing, has become a collector's object. A handful of restaurants in France, London and New York keep the service alive, and most of them have had to design their own press.