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Braised Ducks

Braised ducks cooked slowly with butter, sage, onions, and water, served with green peas and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Braised Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the ducks as for chickens.

  2. Season the dressing with butter, sage, onions, salt, and pepper.

Braise and brown

  1. Place the ducks in a pot with chopped onions, butter, and enough water to steam.

  2. Cover and stew gently until cooked.

  3. Remove the lid, let the water evaporate, and brown the ducks.

Serve

  1. Serve with green peas and jelly.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Sage + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, moist cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the ducks brown at the end.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the pot.

The step that matters

Remove the lid, let the water evaporate, and brown the ducks.. Braising leaves the meat moist but pale. Evaporating the remaining liquid lets the surface dry and brown, which builds flavor and color.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, sage, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, sage, pepper. 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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