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Stewed Ducks

A dish of ducks stewed in a thickened gravy flavored with lemon or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,404 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Cut giblets into pieces and cover with 2 cups water.

  2. Stew for 2 hours to make gravy.

Braise the ducks

  1. Place the stuffed ducks in a dripping pan and dilute the giblet gravy until it half immerses the ducks.

  2. Cover the ducks with another pan of the same size and let them simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Remove the ducks and keep them hot.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy in the pan with browned flour.

  2. Boil the gravy once.

  3. Stir in the juice of 1 lemon or 2 teaspoons of currant jelly.

  4. Serve the ducks with currant jelly on the side.

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 + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the meat that is cooked slowly in the gravy until tender.
Giblets (in the method)
Give the stewing liquid a rich, meaty flavour for the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the ducks and the serving spoon.
Lemon juice or currant jelly
Adds acidity or sweetness to balance the rich, fatty gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the ducks gently under the cover. A gentle simmer, not a hard boil, lets the tough duck meat break down into tenderness while keeping the skin and meat from drying out. Boiling vigorously toughens muscle proteins and can make the meat stringy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, lemon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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