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Roast Ducks

Roast Ducks is a dish of ducks roasted with sage, shallot, and giblets, served with currant or grape jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Clean, wash, and wipe the ducks carefully.

  2. Add a little sage to the usual dressing.

  3. Stuff the ducks.

  4. Sew them up.

  5. Reserve the giblets for the gravy.

Roast

  1. Roast the ducks for about 1 hour, basting well.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim the gravy.

  2. Add the chopped giblets.

  3. Thicken the gravy.

  4. Stew the giblets in a little water.

  5. Chop the giblets finely.

  6. Add them to the gravy with the chopped shallot and browned flour.

  7. Serve with currant or grape 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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sage + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + curranttop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
The main protein, which the roasting cooks through while basting keeps the skin moist.
Giblets
Chopped and stewed, they add savoury depth and body to the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet aromatic onion flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the ducks while they roast. Duck has a thick layer of fat under the skin. Basting with the rendered juices keeps the meat moist and helps the skin brown evenly, while the fat has to be drained off so the bird doesn't stew in it.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, shallot, flour):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, shallot, flour. 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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