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Roast Duck

Roasted duck stuffed with onions, sage, breadcrumbs, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the duck for roasting.

  2. Chop the onions finely and soak them in cold water.

Stuff and bake

  1. Mix the drained onions with sage, bread crumbs, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stuff the duck with the mixture.

  3. Bake the duck for one hour.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Is the main protein; its fat renders during roasting, keeping the meat moist and crisping the skin.
Onions
Soaking softens their sharp bite, and they add moisture and sweetness to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and butter, giving the stuffing body and helping it hold together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the stuffing taste savoury and brown lightly.

The step that matters

Soaking the onions. Soaking chopped onions in cold water mellows their sharp sulphur compounds, so the stuffing tastes sweeter. Drain them well, since excess water would make the stuffing soggy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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