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Salmis De Canard

A roasted duck served with a wine and broth sauce, accompanied by fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salmis De Canard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the duck

  1. Roast the duck with the slices of bread underneath at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove the duck and let it cool; then cut it into pieces.

  3. Coarsely chop the carcass and trimmings.

Make the sauce

  1. Sauté the chopped onion in oil or butter.

  2. Add the duck trimmings, crushed bread, shallots, peppercorns, mace, and bay leaf.

  3. Pour in the red wine and broth; reduce by half.

  4. Strain the sauce and return it to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the duck pieces in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Serve on a platter, sauced, and surround with fried croutons.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Bread + shallottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 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

Duck
Provides the rich meat and fat that flavour both the meat and the sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, and reduces to concentrate the sauce's flavour.
Bread
Roasted underneath to soak up fat, and crushed into the sauce to thicken it.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which reduces to a concentrated body.
Onion
Sweetens and builds savoury base flavour when sautéed in fat.

The step that matters

Heat the duck pieces in the sauce without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in the duck meat and can make it dry and stringy, so gentle heat keeps it tender while it warms through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, shallot, red wine, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, shallot, red wine, butter. 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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