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Mock Duck

A stuffed beefsteak filled with turkey dressing and topped with pork fat, roasted until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mock Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the beefsteak with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Prepare a dressing as you would for turkey and fill the steak with it.

  3. Sew up the steak to secure the filling.

  4. Place 2-3 slices of fat pork on top of the steak.

Roast

  1. Roast the steak, basting often until cooked through.

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. Turkey + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + turkeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Beefsteak
Forms the main body of the dish, wrapped around the filling and cooked through.
Fat pork
Lies on top of the steak and bastes it with rendered fat as it roasts.
Dressing
Fills the steak, adding moisture and flavor to the meat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Basting often while roasting. Beef steak is lean and can dry out in the oven. Frequent basting with the pan juices and rendered pork fat keeps the surface moist and helps the meat cook evenly, so it stays tender rather than tough.

“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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