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Duck Pie

A pie filled with sliced roast duck and sausage, encased in puff pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Duck Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the meat from the roast ducks thinly and steep in a mixture of tarragon vinegar, olive oil, onion juice, and pepper for 1 hour.

  2. Line a baking dish with puff pastry and bake just until it colors.

Assemble and bake

  1. Drain the duck slices and layer them alternately with sausage meat in the dish.

  2. Cover with more pastry, brush with egg white, and bake for 1.5 hours.

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. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat from roast ducks
Provides the main filling and rich, savory flavor.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savory body that keeps the layered filling moist.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that puffs and browns in the oven.
Egg white
Brushed on top to help the crust brown and gloss.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps keep the duck moist.

The step that matters

Steeping the duck slices. Steeping in vinegar and oil seasons the meat through and tenderizes its surface, so the slices stay moist after the long bake.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, tarragon, vinegar, olive, pepper, egg):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, tarragon, vinegar, olive, pepper, egg. 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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