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Mock Duck

A stew of thinly sliced steak rolled with bread, butter, onion, and parsley, simmered in water and thickened with burned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mock Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  1. Cut the steak thinly and beat it if not very tender.

  2. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the steak.

  3. Prepare the dressing by moistening the bread until it can be chopped easily.

  4. Mix the bread with melted butter, chopped onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  5. Spread the dressing over the steak, fold it, and roll it up.

  6. Place any leftover dressing on top and add parsley.

Cook and serve

  1. Lay the roll in a baking pan, add hot water, and cook for 3 hours.

  2. Add more water if necessary, then carefully remove the roll.

  3. Thicken the gravy with burned flour and serve it over the roll or in a gravy boat.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Tender round steak
Forms the wrapper that holds the dressing and becomes the meat of the dish.
Stale rolls or bread
Dry bread absorbs moisture and holds the stuffing together when chopped and lightly moistened.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing, carrying flavor and softening the bread.
Burned flour
Darkens the gravy and thickens the cooking liquid, giving it color and body.

The step that matters

Rolling the steak around the dressing. If the dressing is too wet or packed too tightly, it can squeeze out or turn soggy during the long cooking. Moistening the bread only until it can be chopped keeps the filling firm enough to hold its shape.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, butter, parsley, 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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