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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck is a whole wild duck seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and flour, roasted with onion and served with lemon or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Roast Wild Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the duck

  1. Place the onion halves inside the duck and let it sit for several hours.

  2. Wipe the duck inside and out with a damp towel.

  3. Tuck back the wings and truss the legs close to the body.

  4. Rub the duck with salt, pepper, butter, and flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the duck in a baking pan and add 1 cup of boiling water.

  2. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 25 to 35 minutes, basting occasionally with butter.

  3. Serve very hot with slices of lemon or currant jelly.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which is lean and gains a crisp skin when roasted at high heat.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the skin brown and keeps the surface moist during basting.
Flour
Dusted on the skin, it helps the surface brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 25 to 35 minutes, basting occasionally with butter. Wild duck is lean and cooks quickly, so overcooking dries the meat. Basting with butter adds moisture and helps the skin brown evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, 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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