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To Stew Wild Ducks

A stew of wild ducks cooked with salt, pepper, cloves, shallots, butter, vinegar, water, lemon peel, herbs, and served with lemon slices and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Stew Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Rub the insides of the ducks with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and powdered cloves.

  2. Place 1–2 shallots and 2 tablespoons of butter inside each duck.

Stew

  1. In a pan that fits the ducks, add a large spoon of butter under and over them, along with vinegar and water.

  2. Season with additional pepper, salt, lemon peel, and sweet herbs.

  3. Cover the pan tightly and let the ducks stew until cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid through a sieve.

  2. Pour the strained liquid over the ducks.

  3. Serve hot with lemon slices and fried bread.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provides the rich meat that the stew is built around.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the meat moist and flavorful.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavor of the duck and sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aroma that deepens as they cook.
Lemon peel
Adds fragrant citrus aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cover the pan tightly and stew until cooked through. Gentle, moist heat in a tightly sealed pan breaks down tissue slowly and traps steam, so the meat stays tender and moist rather than drying out.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, shallot, butter, vinegar, lemon, bread):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, shallot, butter, vinegar, lemon, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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