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Roast Duck

A roasted duck stuffed with onions, sage, bread crumbs, butter, and seasoned, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Duck

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. Clean and dry the duck.

  2. Soak the chopped onions in cold water, then drain.

  3. Mix the onions with sage, bread crumbs, butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stuff the duck with the mixture.

Roast

  1. Dredge and baste the duck like a turkey.

  2. Roast the duck in a 350°F (175°C) oven for over an hour.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For gravy, strain the drippings, skim off the fat, and stir in browned flour and mustard.

  2. Serve the duck hot with 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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sage + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it roasts.
Onions
Soaking mellows their sharpness, and they add moisture and sweetness to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and butter in the stuffing, keeping it moist and lightly textured.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the stuffing and skin brown.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Roast the duck in a 350°F (175°C) oven for over an hour. Duck has a thick layer of fat under the skin. Roasting long enough lets that fat render out so the skin crisps and the meat cooks through without drying.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sage, bread, butter, pepper, flour, mustard. 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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