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Wild Duck with Orange Salad

A roasted wild duck served with a salad of sliced oranges, tarragon, chervil, salad oil, vinegar, and sugar, accompanied by port wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wild Duck with Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Roast the duck before a good fire for 20 minutes.

Make the orange salad

  1. Peel and slice the oranges.

  2. Sprinkle the oranges with sugar, vinegar, and salad oil.

Serve

  1. Dish up the duck and serve the salad on a separate dish.

  2. Serve port wine sauce alongside.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + tarragontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Vinegar + port winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Orange + cherviltop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, which is cooked by roasting before a fire.
Oranges
Supply bright acidity and juice that lightly flavour the salad.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the oranges and sugar.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth mouthfeel.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, chervil, vinegar, sugar, port wine, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chervil, vinegar, sugar, port wine, 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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