Roast Duck with Hazelnuts (or other fowl)

Apicius 6.5.2
Translation from https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Apicius/home.html

Another Sauce for Fowl (Aliter ius in avibus)

Pepper, lovage, parsley, dry mint, fennel blossoms​1 moistened with wine; add roasted nuts from Pontus​2 or almonds, a little honey, wine, vinegar, and broth to taste. Put oil in a pot, and heat and stir the sauce, adding green celery seed, cat-mint; carve the fowl and cover with the sauce.​3

1 Dann. Cnecus.
2 Turkish hazelnuts.
3 Tor. continuing without interruption.

Roast Duck with Hazelnuts
recipe from The Classical Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger

Two unusual herbs are called for in this ancient recipe. Safflower is often known as fake saffron: the powder sold today as saffron is more than likely adulterated with saffron. Under its real name, safflower is best known to us as a recently developed cooking oil. Calamint, still used in southern Europe as a culinary herb, is hard to find elsewhere; the closely related catmint is rather commoner and thus used in this recipe (the Latin name Nepeta may, it seems, be used for either).

6 oz (1 1/2 cups/ 170 g) hazelnuts
2 teaspoons chopped fresh or 1 1/2teaspoons dried mint
2 teaspoons chopped fresh lovage or celery leaf
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon chopped fresh catmint or calamint (if not available, increase the mint)
2 teablespoons (60 g) clear honey
10 fl oz (1 1/4 cups/ 280 ml) red wine
2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
2 tablespoons (30 ml) red wine vinegar
5 fl oz (2/3 cup/ 150 ml) fish sauce
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
Pinch saffron powder or strands
3 lb (1.5 kg) duck, chicken or other bird
Salt

Roast hazelnuts for 10 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees F (180 degrees C/ gas mark 4). Pound or process them to a fine crumb. Add them to a saucepan with all the other ingredients for the sauce and bring them slowly to a boil. Place the bird in a roasting pan and season well with salt and pepper. Cut into the breast and leg and open the incisions before pouring the sauce into the bird. Roast in the normal way in a pre-heated oven at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C/ gas mark 6) for about I 1/2 hours. While cooking, repeatedly baste the bird to ensure that the skin is well covered in the nut mixture. As the wine reduces slightly the sauce will form a crust the breast, which needs to be maintained once it has formed.

Serves four