Name: Stewed Ducks and Olives
Ingredients: 1 duck; 2 tablespoons butter; herbs (your choice); seasonings (your choice); 1 cup stoned olives

Why it works: Butter and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Stewed Ducks and Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the duck in butter.
Make gravy in the pan with herbs and seasonings.
Simmer the duck in the gravy until tender.
Strain the gravy and add the stoned olives.

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.

Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the gravy.
Butter: Browns the duck, adding richness and colour to the surface before stewing.
Stoned olives: Add briny, savoury flavour to the strained gravy.

“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.