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Roast Wild Ducks

Roast Wild Ducks is a dish of whole mallard ducks roasted with salt pork and lemon, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mallard duck and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 449 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Roast Wild Ducks

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. Prepare the ducks by cleaning them thoroughly; do not stuff them.

  2. Tie slices of salt pork or bacon over the breasts.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the ducks for 15 minutes per pound at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Serve with gravy in a boat and lemon quarters on the same dish.

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. Mallard duck + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mallard duck + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pork + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,786 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Bastes the breasts with fat as it renders, keeping the lean meat moist and adding flavour.
Mallard ducks
Provide the main meat; their fat renders during roasting, so the skin crisps and browns.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks for 15 minutes per pound at 400°F (200°C). Wild duck is lean and easily overcooked, which makes it tough and dry. Timing by weight at a steady high oven heat gives a crisp skin while the meat stays juicy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mallard duck, 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.

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