Stuffed Duck Breast with Cabbage and Dumplings
Serves 4–6 Time Prep: 1 hourCooking: 2½ hrs Difficulty 3/5 Ingredients 18 Steps 18
Almost every Austrian family has its own Christmas tradition. Christmas Eve differs from family to family; however, many cannot imagine Christmas without the delicious aroma of a succulent roast duck floating in the air. In general, Austrians are always really fond of eating duck.
Ingredients
Cabbage salad
- 1 head of green cabbage, shredded
- 1 small onion, finely minced
- ½ cup white granulated sugar
- 1½ cups white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp salt
Duck
- 1 ea. (about 2.5 kg) whole fresh duck, at room temperature
- Salt
- Pepper
- 50 g butter
- 1 tbsp marjoram or other herbs
- 4–5 apples, peeled
Bread dumplings
- 4 stale white bread rolls, cut into small cubes
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup milk
- 5 g melted butter
- Salt
- Ground nutmeg
- Parsley
Steps
Cabbage salad
- Put shredded cabbage and minced onion in large bowl.
- Combine vinegar, salt and sugar in separate bowl. Pour over cabbage.
- Cover. Refrigerate several hours before serving.
Duck
- Preheat oven to 200°C. Disembowel duck if not done. Remove fat clumps from tail. Rinse bird.
- Grease bird all over with butter. Season generously inside and out with salt, pepper and marjoram.
- Stuff duck with peeled apples. Close it.
- Put duck breast-side up in roasting pan deep enough for rendered fat. Roast at 200°C about 15 minutes.
- Take out duck. Baste. Turn breast-side down. Roast 15 more minutes. Repeat every 15 minutes. Allow roughly 1 hour per kg, about 2½ hours total.
- About 20 minutes before end, add more butter for crispy skin. Done when skin is richly browned and crisp.
- Turn off oven. Rest duck 10 minutes.
Bread dumplings
- Put bread cubes in large bowl. Pour milk over, more or less depending on dryness of bread.
- Melt butter in pan. Mix with eggs and remaining ingredients in bowl. Add to bread mixture.
- Squeeze bread mixture through fingers until smooth and sticky. If too loose, add 1–2 tablespoons flour.
- Bring large pot of salted water to boil. Form small portions of dough into balls.
- Drop dumplings into water. Simmer about 30 minutes until light, firm and well risen. Remove with large spoon. Or form dough into roll, wrap in wet dishtowel, tie both ends firmly, and simmer in pot about 30 minutes.
Serving
- Remove apples from duck. Carve. Put dark brown gravy in extra cup.
- If towel method was used, remove dumpling roll from towel. Cut into slices. Arrange on plate. Otherwise, transfer drained dumplings to dish.
- Serve duck and dumplings hot, with cabbage salad and fruity red wine.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Stuffed Duck Breast with Cabbage and Dumplings” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2026-04-12, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Photo. Duck with side dishes.JPG by The original uploader was Refrotsrella at English Wikibooks., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia. Resized; otherwise unchanged.