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To Boil Ducks with Onion Sauce

A dish of boiled ducks served with onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Boil Ducks with Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and draw the ducks.

  2. Soak the ducks in warm water for a few minutes.

Soak in milk

  1. Place the ducks in an earthen pot and pour boiling milk over them.

  2. Let the ducks sit in the milk for 2 to 3 hours.

Boil and serve

  1. Remove the ducks, dredge them well with flour.

  2. Place the ducks in a pot of cold water.

  3. Cover and boil slowly for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the ducks and serve with onion sauce.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Ducks
The main meat, which becomes tender through the milk soak and slow boiling.
Milk
Soaking in milk softens the meat and mellows its strong flavour.

The step that matters

Boil slowly, covered. A hard, rapid boil toughens the meat fibres and can break the birds apart. Gentle simmering, covered, cooks the meat evenly and keeps it tender and moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, sauce. 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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