Skip to main content
Main

Mock Duck

A stuffed steak topped with pork slices, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,527 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mock Duck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Lay the sage stuffing on the round of steak.

  2. Fold over the steak and sew it up.

  3. Dust the outside with flour.

  4. Place the two slices of fresh pork on top.

Bake and season

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. When browned, sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

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. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Steak round
Forms the outer wrap that holds the stuffing and cooks into a tender, meaty shell.
Sage stuffing
Fills the steak and flavours the meat as it bakes and moistens from within.
Flour
Dusted on the outside to help the surface brown during baking.
Fresh pork
Laid on top to add rich, savoury flavour and fat to the bake.

The step that matters

Sewing the steak closed. If the seams are not sewn tightly, the stuffing can leak out during baking and the meat may dry out or lose its juices. A secure closure keeps the filling inside so it steams and flavours the meat.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pork. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes