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Braised Ducks

Braised ducks cooked with butter, onions, sage, salt, pepper, and water, served with green peas and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Braised Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and braise

  1. Season the ducks with butter, sage, onions, salt, and pepper.

  2. Place the ducks in a pot with chopped onions, butter, and enough water to steam.

  3. Cover and let them stew gently.

  4. Allow the water to evaporate, then brown the ducks.

Serve

  1. Serve with green peas and 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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Sage + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 gentle stewing and then browns when the water evaporates.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the duck skin brown during the final step.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour and sweetness as it softens in the pot with the duck.

The step that matters

Allow the water to evaporate, then brown the ducks.. The water must cook off before browning, because surface moisture steams the skin instead of letting it brown. Browning only happens once the surface is dry enough for the Maillard reaction.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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