Skip to main content
Main

Salmis De Cuisses De Canetons

Duck thighs simmered in red Burgundy wine, shallots, and espagnole sauce, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmis De Cuisses De Canetons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Prepare and trim the duck thighs, placing them in a buttered sauté pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Break the carcasses with a knife and add them to a pot with the wine, shallots, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Reduce the wine, then add the espagnole sauce and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and simmer on low heat for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the duck thighs gently, then plate them upright.

  2. Skim the sauce, pour it over the duck, and arrange 6 fried bread croutons around the dish.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

  5. Wine + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck thighs
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender with gentle, extended cooking in the sauce.
Red burgundy wine
Reduces to concentrated flavour and acidity that balances the rich sauce.
Shallots
Add mild aromatic sweetness that deepens as they cook into the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Supplies the body and thickness that gives the sauce its glossy, savoury base.
Fried bread croutons
Add crisp contrast in texture against the soft duck and smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the wine before adding the espagnole sauce. Reducing concentrates the wine's acidity and flavour. If it is not reduced enough, the finished sauce tastes thin and sharp rather than deep and balanced.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, shallot, pepper, sauce, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes