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Stew Ducks

A stew of young ducks cooked with lard, wine, walnut ketchup, anchovy, lemon, garlic, herbs, and cayenne, finished with morels and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Stew Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Lard the ducks on each side of the breast and dust with flour.

  2. Brown the ducks over the fire.

Stew and make the gravy

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

  2. Stew slowly for 30 minutes or until tender.

  3. Remove the ducks and keep them hot.

  4. Skim off the fat and strain the gravy through a fine sieve.

  5. Add morels and truffles to the gravy and boil until reduced to about ½ pint.

Serve

  1. 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 in liquid.
Lard
Fat for browning the ducks, adding richness and a golden surface.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy as it reduces.
Flour
Dusted on the ducks, it helps the surface brown and thickens the gravy slightly.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes a concentrated savoury, slightly tangy flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the ducks over the fire. Browning the flour-dusted surface creates Maillard flavour and colour that carry into the gravy. Pale ducks give a flat, washed-out stew.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, red wine, walnut, ketchup, sauce, anchovy, clove. 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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