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Salmis De Canards Sauvages a LA Minute

A sauce made from sautéed parsley, mushrooms, shallots, wine, Espagnole sauce, mustard, and game stock, served with cooked wild duck.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmis De Canards Sauvages a LA Minute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Prepare the wild ducks as previously instructed.

  2. While they cook, finely chop the parsley, mushrooms, and shallots.

Make the sauce

  1. Sauté them lightly in butter with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Add the wine.

  3. Reduce the wine by half.

  4. Stir in the Espagnole sauce.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Melt in the mustard.

Finish and serve

  1. Carve the cooked ducks.

  2. Add the duck pieces to the sauté pan.

  3. Gently stir over heat without boiling.

  4. Add a little game stock and the butter.

  5. Serve with the sauce.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 cooked, carved and finished in the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce as they soften in butter.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness that builds the base of the sauce.
Dry white wine (chablis)
Adds acidity and flavour, and reducing it concentrates the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Gives the sauce body and a rich, savoury depth.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify and season the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Gently stir over heat without boiling. Once the duck pieces and butter go in, boiling can toughen the meat and cause the butter-enriched sauce to break or separate, so gentle heat keeps it smooth and tender.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, mushroom, shallot, butter, pepper, white wine, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, mushroom, shallot, butter, pepper, white wine, sauce. 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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