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Roasted Duck

Roasted duck stuffed with bread dressing, seasoned, and cooked in oven with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roasted Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Clean the duck and stuff it with bread dressing seasoned with bacon drippings, parsley, celery, pepper, and salt.

  2. Spread the skin with melted butter and dredge with flour.

Roast

  1. Place the duck in a 400°F (200°C) oven and baste with hot water and melted butter every 15 minutes.

  2. Cook for 1-2 hours, allowing 10 minutes for each pound of duck.

  3. The drippings should be a rich brown for gravy.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Duck
Provides the main meat and fat that renders out during roasting.
Melted butter
Adds fat and helps the skin brown as it roasts.
Flour
Dredged on the skin, it helps the surface brown and crisp.
Bread dressing
Fills the cavity, absorbing juices and adding moisture and flavor to the duck.
Bacon drippings
Adds savory fat and aroma to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting and drippings colour. Basting with hot water and butter every 15 minutes keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly. The drippings darken as their sugars and proteins brown, so the gravy depends on them reaching a rich brown without burning.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Celerythe original

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