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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 795 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together795 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + port winetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together598 recipes

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

  4. Orange + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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.

Flavor stand-ins for the chervil

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Allspiceabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Gingerabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, tarragon, vinegar, sugar, port wine, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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