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Roast Duck Stuffed with Apples

A whole duck roasted after being filled with sliced apples, raisins, and seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Duck Stuffed with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the duck

  1. Wash the duck inside and out, then dry with a soft cloth.

  2. Season the inside with salt and pepper.

  3. Peel and slice the apples, then mix the lemon juice with flour.

  4. Roll the apple slices in the lemon-flour mixture.

  5. Wash the raisins and place some inside the duck, followed by apple slices, then more raisins and apple until filled.

  6. Sew the duck closed and tie the skin over the neck.

  7. Rub the outside of the duck with salt and pepper.

Roast

  1. Place the duck in a roasting pan with water.

  2. Roast in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 2 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the rich fat and meat that make up the main dish.
Apples
Add moisture and a tart flavour that balances the rich duck fat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apples and keeps their colour fresh.
Flour
Lightly coats the apple slices, helping them hold their shape during roasting.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture that complements the tart apples.

The step that matters

Filling the duck loosely. Stuffing the cavity tightly can slow heat from reaching the centre, so the stuffing may stay cool while the meat overcooks. Filling it so the apples and raisins have room lets heat circulate and helps the bird cook evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, flour, raisin):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, flour, raisin. 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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