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Roasted Ducks

Roasted ducks stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, onion, and sage, served with gravy and stewed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Clean the ducks.

  2. Truss the ducks like chickens.

  3. Make a stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, grated onion, salt, and pepper.

  4. Season the ducks inside and out with salt, pepper, and a little sage.

Roast

  1. Place the ducks in a roasting pan with a little water and cover with drippings.

  2. Baste the ducks often as they cook.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Stew the giblets.

  2. Chop the giblets.

  3. Pour off most of the fat from the pan.

  4. Thicken the gravy.

  5. Season the gravy well.

  6. 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 roasted whole and trussed for even cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and onion juices to form a moist, soft stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, carrying flavor and moisture.
Grated onion
Adds savory aroma and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks.
Drippings from the ducks
Add rendered fat and savory flavor, helping the duck brown while it roasts.

The step that matters

Pour off most of the fat from the pan. Duck releases a lot of fat as it roasts. Leaving too much in the pan makes the gravy greasy and can dilute its flavor, so most of it should be removed before thickening.

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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