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To Boil Duck

A boiled duck served with a sauce of onion, parsley, gravy, lemon, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Scald the ducks, then soak them in water for a few minutes.

  2. Place the ducks in a dish and pour boiling milk over them, then let them sit for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Remove the ducks and dredge them with flour.

Boil the ducks

  1. Place the ducks in a saucepan of cold water, cover the saucepan, and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the ducks, cover them, and keep them warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, combine the chopped onion, parsley, gravy, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Stew the sauce for 30 minutes.

  3. Place the ducks in a dish and pour the sauce over them.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long gentle boiling.
Flour
Dredging adds a light coating that helps the surface hold onto the dish's sauce.
Gravy
Adds savory liquid and body to the sauce that coats the ducks.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor and sweetness to the sauce as it stews.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, rounding out its flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the ducks in cold water. Starting the ducks in cold water and bringing them up to a boil lets heat penetrate gradually, so the meat cooks through and becomes tender rather than tough on the outside.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, parsley, lemon, pepper, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, parsley, lemon, pepper, butter. 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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