Skip to main content

Wild Duck

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Clean and cut the wild ducks into joints.

  3. Season the duck joints with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. In a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat and brown the duck joints on all sides.

  5. Transfer the browned duck to a roasting pan and roast in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

  6. In the same skillet, add shallots and sauté until translucent.

  7. Deglaze the skillet with wine, scraping up any browned bits.

  8. Add truffles and simmer for a few minutes to create a sauce.

  9. Serve the roasted duck joints with the truffle sauce drizzled on top.

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. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Wine + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  5. Truffle + shallottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, truffle, wine):

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, truffle, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes