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Salmi of Duck or Game

A savory stock made from duck or game bird bones, skin, and trimmings, simmered with vegetables and aromatics.

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

Prepare the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bones, skin, trimmings, and any gravy.

  2. Add the carrot, onion, salt, pepper, parsley, clove, mace, bay leaf, thyme, and butter.

  3. Fry until light brown, then add broth or water and wine with sugar.

  4. Cover and stew until reduced by half.

  5. If needed, prepare brown sauce and add it to the saucepan.

  6. Stew for another 30 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Taste and adjust seasoning, then pour over the meat in a separate saucepan.

  2. Heat until just boiling, then reduce the sauce by boiling fast, skimming as needed.

  3. Serve the bird with the sauce poured over it, garnished with fried sippets and 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 the bones and skin that give the stock its body and flavour.
Butter
Frying the trimmings and vegetables in butter browns them, adding depth and aroma to the stock.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour as it softens during the long stew.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns and softens in the pan.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that helps lift the flavour of the stock.
Brown sauce
Adds body, colour and richness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce by fast boiling. Boiling hard concentrates the flavour and thickens the liquid, while skimming removes foam and fat that would make the sauce cloudy or greasy.

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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