Name: Roast Wild Duck
Ingredients: 1 wild duck; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; 2 very thin slices of fat salt pork; 2 apples, peeled and cut into pieces; 3 small onions, chopped; Dry bread; Boiling water; Melted butter

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Place the duck on a rack in a dripping pan.
Sprinkle the duck with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Cover the breast of the duck with the slices of fat salt pork.
Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, basting with the fat in the pan.
Stuff the duck with the apple pieces and chopped onions for flavor.
For an edible stuffing, soak dry bread in boiling water until absorbed, then press out the water.
Season the bread with salt, pepper, melted butter, and finely chopped onion.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,371 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Swap the apple

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

Avocadofits better
Mangofits about as well
Plumfits about as well
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, onion, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.