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Roast Duck or Goose

Roast duck or goose with forcemeat stuffing, served hot with apple sauce and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,078 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Duck or Goose

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Clean the duck and twist the pinions around the back. Optionally, remove the feet by breaking the bone below the joint.

  2. Stuff the duck with forcemeat, sew up the slit, and secure the legs against the body with a skewer and cord.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the duck in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes for underdone or 1 hour for a fully cooked duck.

  2. Make brown gravy in the dripping pan using stock from the giblets, chopped liver, and gizzard. Skim off grease and boil down until rich and brown.

  3. Serve the duck hot with apple sauce.

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. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat, whose fat renders during roasting to keep the flesh moist and crisp the skin.
Forcemeat
Fills the cavity, flavouring the bird and moistening it from inside as it cooks.
Giblets
Simmered into stock and chopped for the gravy, adding depth and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Choosing the roasting time. Thirty minutes gives an underdone duck and one hour a fully cooked one. Duck fat renders slowly, so pulling the bird too early leaves it pink and fatty, while overcooking dries the meat.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sauce. 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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