Skip to main content
Main

Duck Pie

A savory pie made with roasted duck, gravy, orange juice, olives, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,456 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Duck Pie

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.

Prepare the ducks

  1. Scald and draw the ducks; remove heads, necks, feet, and pinions.

  2. Boil the removed parts with the gizzards and anchovy to make ½ pint of strong gravy.

  3. Remove fat from the ducks, season with pepper, and rub with butter.

  4. Roast the ducks for 20 minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  5. Let the ducks cool, then cut them up and place in a dish with crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the strained gravy, orange juice, and olives.

  2. Cover with a lid of pastry and bake for 1 hour.

  3. For a raised pie, pour in some jelly after dressing the pie.

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. Orange + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Anchovy + olivetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together880 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 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

Young ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during roasting and baking.
Anchovy
Adds a savoury depth to the gravy without tasting distinctly fishy.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich duck and gravy.
Stoned olives
Add salty, briny bites that contrast with the rich meat.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks before assembling. Roasting renders fat and browns the skin, so the pie is not greasy or pale. Removing fat first also keeps the filling from becoming oily.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, pepper, butter, 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