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Stewed Wild Duck

A stew of wild duck pieces cooked with mushroom ketchup, Harvey sauce, port wine, and seasonings, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Coat the duck pieces well with flour.

  2. Place them in a stewpan with mushroom ketchup, Harvey sauce, port wine, and a little water or stock.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and cayenne.

  4. Simmer for about an hour without boiling.

Reduce and serve

  1. Boil and skim the sauce until it thickens to the consistency of cream.

  2. Arrange the duck pieces on toast.

  3. Pour the sauce over the duck and serve hot.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ketchup + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 becomes tender during slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the duck and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Gentle simmering keeps the duck tender and the sauce smooth. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and can break the sauce, so keep the heat low and steady.

“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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