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Dinner — Roast Duck, Apple Sauce, Beef Stew, Mashed Turnips, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Celery

A dinner featuring roast duck served with apple sauce, beef stew, mashed turnips, baked sweet potatoes, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dinner — Roast Duck, Apple Sauce, Beef Stew, Mashed Turnips, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Celery

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Cook the mains

  1. Roast the duck until fully cooked and golden brown.

  2. Prepare the apple sauce by cooking apples until soft and mashing them.

  3. Make the beef stew by simmering beef with vegetables until tender.

  4. Boil the turnips until soft, then mash with butter and seasoning.

  5. Bake sweet potatoes until tender, then serve hot.

  6. Chop celery and serve fresh as a 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + sweet potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sweet potato + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Apple + sweet potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast duck
Provides the main protein; roasting renders fat and browns the skin.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and a sweet-tart flavour that balances the rich meats.
Beef stew
Supplies the braised meat, made tender by slow simmering in liquid.
Mashed turnips
Gives a soft, smooth texture, with butter adding richness and fat.
Baked sweet potatoes
Adds natural sweetness and a soft, starchy texture when baked until tender.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, beef, turnip, sweet potato, celery):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, beef, turnip, sweet potato, celery. 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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