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Stewed Duck, Goose, Rabbit, Quail or Turkey

A stew of game birds or turkey simmered with water, salt, pepper, onion or garlic, served with dumplings and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Duck, Goose, Rabbit, Quail or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Dress the game and place it in a stew pan with 1 quart of water per pound.

  2. Add coarse sea salt, black pepper, and either onion or garlic.

  3. Cook over low heat for 2 hours.

Add dumplings and gravy

  1. Make dumplings by mixing flour and baking powder, then drop small portions into the stew.

  2. Cook the dumplings for 30 minutes.

  3. Mix a thin batter of milk and flour for gravy and cook for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Game
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly in water.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and gives the dumplings their body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dumpling dough, making it light and puffed as it cooks.
Milk
Adds richness and body to the gravy batter.

The step that matters

Cook the dumplings in the simmering stew. Dumplings need to be dropped into gently simmering liquid and covered so they steam through. If the stew boils hard, they can break apart, and if they are undercooked, the dough stays dense and doughy inside.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, flour, milk. 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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