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To Stew Ducks

A stew of young ducks cooked slowly with lard, water, wine, walnut ketchup, browning sauce, anchovy, lemon, garlic, herbs, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Stew Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Lard the ducks on each side.

  2. Dust them with flour and brown them before the fire.

Stew

  1. Place the ducks in a deep pan with water, red wine, walnut ketchup, browning sauce, anchovy, lemon, garlic, and sweet herbs.

  2. Stew slowly for 30 minutes or until tender.

  3. Transfer ducks to a dish to keep warm.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim off the fat from the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy and add morels and truffles.

  3. Boil the gravy until reduced to about ½ pint.

  4. Pour the gravy over the ducks and serve.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Lard
Adds fat for richness and helps the ducks brown in the first stage.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stewing liquid and gravy.
Walnut ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Browning sauce
Adds colour and a slightly bitter, roasted flavour to the gravy.
Anchovy
Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy until reduced. Reducing concentrates the flavour and thickens the liquid, so the gravy is rich rather than thin. Boiling too briefly leaves it watery, while over-reducing can make it overly salty, since the anchovy and ketchup concentrate too.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, ketchup, sauce, anchovy, lemon, clove, garlic):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, ketchup, sauce, anchovy, lemon, clove, garlic. 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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