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To Boil Duck

A boiled duck served with a sauce of onion, parsley, gravy, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Scald the ducks.

  2. Soak them in water for a few minutes.

  3. Place the ducks in a dish. Pour boiling milk over them. Let them sit for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Remove the ducks. Dredge them with flour.

Boil and keep warm

  1. Place the ducks in a saucepan of cold water. Cover. Boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the ducks. Cover them. Keep them warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, combine the chopped onion, parsley, gravy, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and butter. Stew the sauce for 30 minutes.

  2. Place the ducks in a dish. Pour the sauce over them.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the duck, helping thicken the surrounding liquid and add body.
Milk
Softens and mellows the duck during the brief soak before boiling.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the sauce as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Dredging the ducks with flour before boiling. Flour that is applied evenly and dry clings to the surface and thickens the liquid around the duck. Clumps or wet spots can leave lumps in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, parsley, lemon, pepper, 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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