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Wild Ducks Stewed a LA Begarrade

A stew of roasted wild ducks simmered in sherry, Espagnol sauce, and orange peel, finished with orange juice and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,402 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Wild Ducks Stewed a LA Begarrade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Roast the wild ducks until lightly colored the day before.

  2. Cut the ducks into pieces.

  3. Place the pieces in two stewpans.

  4. Chop the backs finely.

Make the essence

  1. Add the chopped backs to a stewpan with stock and sherry.

  2. Simmer gently for one hour.

  3. Strain the stew.

  4. Skim the essence.

  5. Add the essence to the Espagnol sauce.

  6. Bring the sauce to a boil.

Flavor the sauce with orange

  1. Peel the oranges, removing the white pith.

  2. Cut the peel into fine shreds.

  3. Boil the shreds in water for one minute.

  4. Strain the shreds.

  5. Add the shreds to the sauce.

  6. Squeeze the juice from the orange halves into a pan.

  7. Add the juice to the sauce.

  8. Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

  9. Season the sauce with salt and cayenne pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Divide the sauce between the duck pieces.

  2. Simmer gently for ten minutes.

  3. Add gravy.

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. Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Sherry + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which is pre-roasted to set colour and flavour before stewing.
Espagnol sauce
Forms the rich, thickened body of the stew that the duck pieces are served in.
Seville oranges
Add bright acidity and aromatic bitterness from the peel and juice to balance the rich sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stock used for the essence.

The step that matters

Skim the essence. Fat and impurities rising from the stewed backs would make the sauce greasy and cloudy, so they should be removed before the essence is added to the sauce.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sauce, pepper):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sauce, pepper. 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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