The Chinese domesticated ducks 4,000 years ago, by taming wild species or hatching eggs. In China, the gratification of eating duck is strengthened by the poetic and symbolic association of the bird (for instance, it represents conjugal fidelity). The Egyptians tamed ducks that swam on the Nile.
In North America, the most common and best of the wild ducks is the mallard, the ancestor of the majority of breeds of domesticated ducks. Some farmers still produce mallards on a small scale: duck lovers rear the Long Island, Aylesbury and Peking types. The most famous breed of duck in America is certainly the Long Island duckling, first brought to New York from China by a New York merchant in 1873. There are several other types, including teal, widgeon, shoveler, pochard and scaup. They have a moderately thick layer of fat underneath the skin, but the flesh itself is not particularly fatty. In culinary terms, the male is called a drake, while the female is a duck; in French, the masculine forms, canard and caneton, are always used for duck and duckling, whether male or female, and the feminine forms, cane and canette, are seldom used on menus.
From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
