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Roast Duck

Roast duck prepared with salt, pepper, pork fat, and optional stuffing of onions, apples, or bread, baked and served with watercress and orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Clean, stuff, and truss the ducks.

  2. For wild duck stuffing, place 3 small onions or quartered apples inside each bird and remove before serving.

  3. For domestic duck stuffing, soak stale bread in boiling water, then squeeze out excess water.

  4. Season the bread with salt, pepper, melted butter, and finely chopped onions.

Roast

  1. Place ducks on a rack in a dripping pan.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Cover the breast of each duck with 2 slices of fat salt pork.

  4. If using wild ducks, bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20-30 minutes, basting every 5 minutes.

  5. If using domestic ducks, reduce heat to 350°F (175°C) and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Garnish with watercress and serve with orange sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 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

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy with slow roasting.
Fat salt pork
Bastes the breast as it melts, keeping the lean meat moist and adding richness.
Apples
Scent the bird from inside as they cook, adding gentle aroma and mild sweetness.
Stale bread
Absorbs moisture and fat to form a soft, tender stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting the wild ducks. Wild duck is very lean, so regular basting with its own juices helps keep the meat moist while the skin crisps. Skipping it can leave the meat dry.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, onion, bread, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, onion, bread, butter. 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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