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Ragout of Duck, or Any Other Kind of Poultry or Game

A slow‑cooked ragout made with duck or other poultry, broth, spices, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ragout of Duck, or Any Other Kind of Poultry or Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Partly roast the duck or poultry, then cut into serving pieces.

Make the broth

  1. In a stew-pan, combine broth or water with meat trimmings, onion, cloves, allspice, black pepper, and lemon rind.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off impurities, then simmer gently with the lid on for 1.5 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid and keep the meat warm in a dish.

Make the gravy

  1. In a clean stew-pan, melt butter and add enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  2. Gradually add the strained gravy, bring to a boil, then stir in port wine, lemon juice, and salt.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes, then pour the gravy over the meat and garnish with toasted bread.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the strained gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds rich flavour and fat, and with flour forms the paste that thickens the gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the simmering broth.
Meat trimmings
Release savoury meat flavour into the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Adding the strained gravy to the flour-butter paste. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring keeps the paste smooth. Flour starch swells and thickens only when it meets liquid evenly, so large additions at once form lumps. Bringing it to a boil then fully thickens the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, allspice, pepper, lemon, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, allspice, pepper, lemon, 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.

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