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To Roast Wild Ducks

A roasted wild duck stuffed with a bread, butter, onion, and sage mixture, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Clean and prepare the ducks as you would poultry.

  2. In a bowl, mix the crumbled bread, butter, chopped onion, pepper, salt, and sage.

  3. Season the ducks inside and out with pepper, salt, and sage.

  4. Fill the ducks with the dressing.

  5. Skewer the ducks tightly.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the ducks in a pan, back side up.

  2. Sprinkle the ducks with flour.

  3. Add a tablespoon of flour to the pan.

  4. Add enough water to make gravy.

  5. When the ducks are nicely browned, turn them over.

  6. Baste the ducks frequently.

  7. Serve 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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which is cooked whole and stays moist under basting.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the skin brown and the dressing stay moist.
Baker's bread
Forms the body of the dressing, soaking up fat and juices so it stays tender inside the bird.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savour to the dressing as it cooks in the bird.
Flour
Dusted on the surface and stirred into the pan, it helps the skin brown and thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Turning the ducks when nicely browned. Turning too early can tear the skin and expose the meat before it has set a browned crust. Waiting for even browning lets the fat render and the surface develop colour, while frequent basting keeps the meat from drying out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, onion, pepper, sage, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, onion, pepper, sage, flour. 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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