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Wild Ducks Grilled Sauce Piquant

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Wild Ducks Grilled Sauce Piquant

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Roast the wild ducks and cut them into pieces: five from the breast, four from the quarters, and two from the back of each duck.

  2. Score the pieces (except the backs) with a sharp knife and moisten with clarified butter.

  3. Grill the pieces lightly, being careful not to burn them.

  4. Place the grilled ducks on a nice potato paste.

  5. Serve with piquant sauce around the ducks and lightly glaze the ducks.

  6. Sprinkle a mixture of cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt over the ducks before serving.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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

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