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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck is a roasted duck served with a sauce of Worcestershire, mushroom catsup, mustard, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Wild Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the duck

  1. Do not dress the wild duck too soon after killing; keep it for several days in cold weather.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast

  1. Bake the duck for 5 to 10 minutes without basting to retain the gravy.

  2. Baste frequently with butter and water for 30 to 40 minutes until cooked.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix Worcestershire sauce, mushroom catsup, a little salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice in a small saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture, then remove from heat and stir in prepared mustard.

  3. Pour the sauce into a hot gravy boat.

  4. Serve on a very hot dish with a cut lemon.

  5. If using teal, serve each on a slice of toast, roasted before the fire.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Main protein; roasting cooks it and renders its fat into the pan.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown while basting.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the sauce.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and duck.

The step that matters

Basting timing. Basting too early, before the bird has begun to cook, can wash off seasoning and slow browning; the record's method bakes first without basting to hold the juices. Basting frequently once the duck is cooking keeps the surface moist and golden.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, mushroom, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, mushroom, pepper, lemon. 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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