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Duck a LA Mode

A stew of quartered ducks cooked in butter, gravy, port wine, herbs, shallots, anchovy, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Duck a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Quarter the ducks and place them in a stew pan.

  2. Sprinkle with flour, pepper, and salt.

Brown and stew

  1. Add butter pieces to the pan and fry the ducks until light brown.

  2. Remove the pan from the heat.

  3. Add gravy and port wine.

  4. Sprinkle more flour.

  5. Add sweet herbs, minced shallots, anchovy, and cayenne.

  6. Stew the ducks in the gravy until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the ducks to a dish.

  2. Remove the herbs.

  3. Skim off excess fat.

  4. Serve the ducks with the sauce poured over them.

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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 long slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the ducks, helping them brown and giving the sauce richness.
Flour
Coats the duck and thickens the gravy sauce as it cooks.
Gravy
Forms the cooking liquid that braises the ducks and becomes the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the ducks in the gravy until tender. Duck meat is tough and fatty, so it needs long, gentle simmering in liquid to break down connective tissue. Cooking too hard can toughen the meat and make the sauce greasy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, butter, port wine, anchovy):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Turnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, butter, port wine, anchovy. 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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