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For Stewing Ducks Whole

Whole ducks stewed with broth, anchovy, lemon peel, pepper, onion, mace, red wine, butter, grated bread, and garnished with force meat balls, bacon, and shallots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

For Stewing Ducks Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw and clean the ducks.

Stew and thicken

  1. Place ducks in a stew-pan with broth, anchovy, lemon peel, pepper, onion, mace, and red wine.

  2. Stew until well cooked.

  3. Add butter and grated bread to thicken.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with force meat balls, crispy bacon, and shallots.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished sauce a smooth body.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and thickens the stewing liquid into a sauce.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew until well cooked. Duck meat is tough and fatty, so it needs a long, gentle simmer for the connective tissue to soften. Rushing this leaves the meat chewy and the sauce greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, lemon, pepper, onion, red wine, butter, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, lemon, pepper, onion, red wine, butter, bread. 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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