![\"\"](\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/duck_to_water-1.jpg\")
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Duck: Fish or fowl? Sometimes it’s been\u00a0both.<\/p>\n
The image above is from Pompei, and while I don’t mean to suggest that the Romans confused waterfowl and seafish, I find it\u00a0amusing that some later Europeans did.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/duck_breast_tomato_lacinato.jpg\")
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We’ve been\u00a0feasting on a lot of\u00a0fish lately, and even on Wednesday, the night\u00a0following\u00a0this meal\u00a0featuring\u00a0pan-fried duck breast, when I had a night away from the kitchen, there was seafood. As almost always, it came from New York waters; as almost never, we sat at a long communal table, outside, at dusk, just a block from the Hudson. The venue was Michael Anthony<\/a>‘s\u00a0restaurant,\u00a0Untitled<\/a>, the dish,\u00a0cioppino<\/a><\/em>, the terrific main course of a farmer’s dinner which otherwise almost exclusively featured the very fine vegetables of Alewife Farm<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the day before, we had enjoyed an entr\u00e9e of duck breast at home, which means I did not prepare seafood. But wait! In some circles duck is considered fish, or at least that was the case during a time when the consumption of fish was a weighty concern through much of the Western world.<\/p>\n Medieval catholics would often\u00a0really stretch the definition of ‘fish’ in order to be able to enjoy more of their favorite foods on Fridays or fast days<\/a>, and the duck was considered\u00a0to be\u00a0in that category, as was other aquatic life such as geese, puffins, dolphins, and whales. As late as the 17th century, at least in Quebec, the Church officially declared that the beaver, as an aquatic animal and a skilled swimmer,\u00a0was actually a fish [apparently arguing from “..the ‘Summa Theologica<\/em>‘ of Thomas Aquinas, which bases animal classification as much on habit as anatomy.<\/a>“].<\/p>\n I could go on, and, because I had been a Catholic as a child, and have always been interested in every aspect of food, I will. Young rabbits were considered fish and not meat (I do not know why), as were frogs, snakes, and (as of a Louisiana 2010 episcopal decree) alligators.<\/p>\n So we had duck. It didn’t seem at all like fish. It definitely didn’t feel like a fast day.<\/p>\n\n