Wuzhen Sauce Duck

Wuzhen sauce duck is a celebrated braised dish of local river ducks steeped and reduced in a aged master stock with white liquor, soy sauce, rock sugar and spices, the skin a glossy sauce-red and the flesh firm and deeply savoury, balanced between salty and sweet.

Sauce duck grows from the Jiangnan household custom of sauce-braising for the new year; Wuzhen, a hub of canal trade and sauce workshops, refined it to a peak. Old houses such as Sanbenzhai have renewed a single master stock for a century, making sauce duck the town's most famed flavour.

Sauce duck is best sliced cold for the table, paired with Sanbai liquor or clear tea, the closing cold dish of a Wuzhen feast or festival; it is also diced over noodles or congee, one bird put to many uses.

The layered aroma of an aged master stock, the glossy sauce-red appearance and the firm, deeply flavoured flesh are the soul of Wuzhen sauce duck.