Name: Roast Duck
Ingredients: 1 duck; 1 cup bread crumbs; 1 teaspoon sage; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; green peas (for serving); apple sauce (for serving)

Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the duck as you would for roast chicken.
In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, sage, onion, butter, salt, and pepper to make the stuffing.
Stuff the duck with the mixture.

Roast and serve

Roast the duck until fully cooked.
Serve with green peas and apple 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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck: Is the main protein, cooked whole so it becomes tender and browned.
Bread crumbs: Absorb juices and butter in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the stuffing and duck skin brown.
Onion: Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it softens within the stuffing.

Swap the apple

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

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Avocadofits better
Applethe original

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