Skip to main content
Main

Mock Duck

A roast dish made by stuffing a round steak with sage and onions, then rolling and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,779 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mock Duck

Ingredients

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.

Prepare

  1. Parboil the round steak.

  2. Prepare a stuffing as you would for duck, seasoning it with sage and onions.

  3. Spread the stuffing generously over the steak.

  4. Roll up the steak tightly and tie it securely.

Roast

  1. Roast in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  2. Sage + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,138 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the outer meat wrap that holds the stuffing while it cooks.
Stuffing
Adds moisture and flavour inside the rolled steak as it roasts.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic flavour to the stuffing.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the stuffing.
Olive oil
Adds fat that helps promote browning and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Roll up the steak tightly and tie it securely.. A tight, well-tied roll keeps the stuffing inside during roasting. If it loosens, stuffing can escape and the roll may cook unevenly.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, olive. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes