Name: Roast Duck
Ingredients: 1 duck; plain or potato stuffing; giblet gravy; apple sauce or currant jelly

Why it works: Potato and apple work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

1 duck
plain or potato stuffing
giblet gravy
apple sauce or currant jelly

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.

Dress and clean the duck.
Stuff the duck with plain or potato stuffing.
Roast the duck in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).
Serve with giblet gravy and apple sauce or currant jelly.
If using a duckling, do not stuff it and roast for a shorter time.

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.

Potato + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together603 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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