Skip to main content
Main

Bagout Op Wild Duck

A stew of wild duck with stock, port wine, lemon, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Bagout Op Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. If using leftover ducks, cut them into joints and reserve the legs, wings, and breasts.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the trimmings, shallots, and stock.

  3. Simmer for about 1 hour.

  4. Strain the gravy.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Sprinkle a little flour.

  3. Pour in the strained gravy.

  4. Bring to a boil, then strain again.

Finish the stew

  1. Add the port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne.

  2. Add the duck pieces and warm through without boiling to keep the duck tender.

  3. Adjust seasoning as needed.

  4. Squeeze Seville orange to enhance the dish.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, whose tenderness depends on gentle heating.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base and moisture for the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and deep fruity flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the duck without boiling. Boiling makes the proteins in the duck contract and toughen, so it should only be warmed through gently to keep the meat tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, port wine, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, port wine, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes