This dish was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, both Cixi and Yuan Shikai liked it, and Qianlong drooled when he saw it.

In the court cuisine, there is a home-cooked dish, so ordinary that it is often seen on the dinner table of our ordinary people, but this dish has been loved by many rulers of successive dynasties, which is steamed duck.
In court cuisine, Yuan Shikai and Empress Dowager Cixi have an unwritten tacit understanding, all court dishes, Yuan Shikai and Empress Dowager Cixi are very agreeable, the two have a great consensus in this regard, both people love duck for ten minutes, especially steamed duck, this dish is also the favorite of the Qianlong Emperor.
Steamed duck has different methods, like our usual people, cook a duck, a simple thing, find a domestic fat duck, put some seasonal nourishing ingredients and fishy spices, cook an afternoon and get it done. However, the practice of Yuan Shikai's era is very different from ours.
Yuan Shikai personally raised ducks at home, and if it is a male duck, it uses the filling method, so that the boiled duck tastes delicious and replenishes the kidney yuan.
According to the Qing dynasty's classic records, Yuan Shikai's method of raising ducks was also unique enough, raising them intensively and feeding them daily with mashed sorghum and deer antler velvet. Wait for the duck to grow up, remove the duck, and stuff the duck belly with glutinous rice, ham, wine, kohlrabi, shiitake mushrooms and other precious ingredients on top of the stewed fat duck.
Put the duck on the pot, the bottom with duck soup to cook, steaming time in about three days, duck soup slowly seeped into the inside of the duck, the last open the pot lid, the aroma of the whole room, the duck meat is crispy and delicious, the entrance is dissolved.