Skip to main content
Main

Roast Wild Duck

Roast a wild duck with salt pork, water, and seasonings, then serve with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pork and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,121 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Wild Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the duck, then sprinkle it with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover the breast with the strips of salt pork.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the duck on a rack in a dripping pan and pour the water into the pan.

  2. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, basting every 5 minutes with the drippings.

  3. Remove the salt pork and serve the duck with currant jelly.

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. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Pork + curranttop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which is lean and benefits from moist, gentle roasting.
Salt pork
Lays fat over the breast, adding moisture and flavour as it melts during roasting.

The step that matters

Basting with the drippings. Wild duck is lean, so the breast can dry out in a hot oven. Regular basting with the rendered pan juices keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes