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Roasted Ducks

Roasted ducks stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, onion, sage, and seasonings, served with stewed cranberries or apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roasted Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Clean and truss the ducks like chickens.

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, butter, grated onion, salt, pepper, and sage to make the stuffing.

  3. Stuff the ducks with the mixture and season them inside and out with salt, pepper, and sage.

Roast

  1. Place the ducks in a roasting pan with a little water and top with bits of drippings.

  2. Roast the ducks, basting often as they cook.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, stew and chop the giblets in the dripping pan after pouring off most of the fat.

  2. Thicken the gravy slightly and season well.

  3. Serve with stewed cranberries or apples.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which is cooked whole around the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and onion juices to form a moist, tender stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the stuffing stay moist and flavorful.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory flavor to the stuffing as it cooks inside the bird.

The step that matters

Basting often while roasting. Regular basting spreads rendered fat and juices over the skin, helping it brown and stay moist. Pouring off excess fat before making gravy keeps the sauce from tasting greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, sage. 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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