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Stewed Ducks

A duck stewed in butter, wine, lemon, herbs, and seasonings, served with olives and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stewed Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the duck in butter.

  2. Make gravy in the pan with herbs and seasonings.

  3. Simmer the duck in the gravy until tender.

  4. Strain the gravy and add stoned olives.

  5. Serve garnished with croutons.

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. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Is the main protein, becoming tender as it simmers slowly in the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and helps brown the duck's surface, building flavour before simmering.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth to the gravy as it reduces in the pan.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the rich duck and gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the duck until tender. Duck meat is fairly lean and dense, so it needs gentle, sustained simmering in liquid to break down connective tissue. Cooking too hard can toughen the meat, while cooking too briefly leaves it chewy.

“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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