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Roasted Wild Ducks

Roasted wild ducks seasoned with salt and pepper, basted with butter, water, and lemon juice, served with orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roasted Wild Ducks

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Dress, clean, and truss the wild ducks.

  2. Sprinkle the ducks with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Place the ducks on a rack in a dripping pan.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

  2. Baste every three minutes with melted butter mixed with boiling water and lemon juice.

  3. Serve with orange 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 becomes tender and browned when roasted at high heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the skin brown and the meat stay moist during basting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavour of the duck.

The step that matters

Basting every three minutes. Frequent basting with the butter mixture keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly. Letting the basting lapse can leave the skin dry and pale.

“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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