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Braised Ducks

Braised ducks cooked with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, white wine, and broth, served with browned turnip and thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braised Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the ducks

  1. Prepare the ducks as for roasting.

  2. Place ducks in a stew-pan with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, and pepper.

  3. Cover with broth and add white wine.

  4. Simmer over gentle heat until ducks are done, basting frequently.

  5. Remove ducks and keep them hot.

Prepare the turnip and gravy

  1. Cut turnip into pieces and fry in butter until browned.

  2. Drain turnip and cook until tender in the duck braising liquid.

  3. Strain and thicken the gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve ducks and pour gravy over them, garnishing with turnip pieces.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Young ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor to the braising liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the rich fat.
Turnip
Browns in butter for flavor, then turns tender in the braising liquid.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and baste until the ducks are done. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and moist; a rapid boil toughens the proteins and dries the surface. Frequent basting keeps the skin moist and flavorful.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, thyme, parsley, pepper, white wine, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, thyme, parsley, pepper, white 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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