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Salmi of Duck or Game

A sauce made from duck or game bird bones, trimmings, and aromatics, simmered with broth, wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Salmi of Duck or Game

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the bruised bones, skin, trimmings, gravy, carrot, onion, salt, pepper, parsley, clove, mace, bay leaf, thyme, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the mixture until light brown.

  3. Add the broth or water, wine, and sugar.

  4. Cover and stew until reduced by half.

  5. Prepare ½ cup brown sauce if not ready.

  6. Add the brown sauce to the saucepan.

  7. Stew for another 30 minutes.

  8. Strain the sauce.

  9. Taste for seasoning.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the meat in another saucepan.

  2. Heat gently for 15 minutes without boiling.

  3. Dish the bird.

  4. Boil the sauce to reduce it, skimming as needed.

  5. Pour the sauce over the meat.

  6. Serve with fried sippets and optional olives or red currant 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck or game bird
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the sauce is built around.
Butter
Fat that browns the vegetables and bones, adding color and roasted flavour to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the richness of the stock.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding savoury base flavour to the sauce.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the stewed sauce as it breaks down.

The step that matters

Frying the mixture until light brown. Browning the bones, trimmings and vegetables develops roasted, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flat sauce, while over-browning turns it bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, onion, pepper, parsley, clove, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, onion, pepper, parsley, clove, thyme. 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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