Name: To Hash a Wild-Duck
Ingredients: 1 wild duck; 1 tablespoon good gravy; 1 tablespoon red wine; 1 onion, sliced thin

Why it works: Red wine and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,075 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

To Hash a Wild-Duck

Ingredients

1 wild duck
1 tablespoon good gravy
1 tablespoon red wine
1 onion, sliced thin

Directions

Prepare and cook

Cut the duck into pieces suitable for eating.
In a pan, combine the duck with gravy, red wine, and onion.
Cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes until heated through.

Serve

Transfer the duck to a serving dish and pour the sauce over it.
Thicken the sauce if desired.

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.

Red wine + oniontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,075 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck: Provides the main meat and its fat, which adds richness to the dish.
Gravy: Adds savory depth and body to the sauce.
Red wine: Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Onion: Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the pan.

The step that matters

Heating the duck through. Only 2-3 minutes over medium heat is given, so the duck can easily overcook. Overcooked meat becomes dry and tough, while the sauce needs enough heat to warm the meat through safely.

“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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To Hash a Wild-Duck