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Duck and Peas, Stewed

A stew of cold roast duck, ham or bacon, peas, onions, parsley, cloves, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Duck and Peas, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Cut the duck into joints and add to the pan with the ham or bacon.

  3. Brown the meat, then sprinkle in the flour and stir well.

  4. Add the onions, parsley, cloves, and gravy.

  5. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the peas and stew gently for another 30 minutes.

  2. Season with cayenne, salt, and sugar.

  3. Arrange the duck around a serving dish and place the peas in the center.

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. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Remains of cold roast duck
Provides the main meat, which is already cooked and only needs to warm through in the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the meat at the start of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving the stew body.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh green flavour, and soften gently in the stew.
Thin gravy
Forms the cooking liquid that carries flavour through the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before adding the flour. Browning the meat and ham or bacon builds deeper, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stirring in the flour afterward lets it coat the meat and thicken the gravy without clumping.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, flour, onion, parsley, clove, sugar):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, flour, onion, parsley, clove, sugar. 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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