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Ducks a LA Mode

A duck dish braised in gravy, red wine, shallots, anchovy, and herbs, finished with a thickened sauce and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Ducks a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the duck

  1. Fry the duck quarters in butter until browned.

  2. Remove excess fat.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the ducks.

Make the sauce

  1. Add gravy, red wine, shallots, anchovy, and sweet herbs. Cover.

  2. Let stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the herbs.

  4. Skim off the grease.

  5. Thicken the sauce until it is as thick as cream.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Red wine + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Duck
Forms the main body of the dish, and browning it in butter adds colour and savoury flavour.
Butter
Conducts heat for browning the duck and adds richness to the surface.
Flour
Sprinkled over the browned duck, it thickens the sauce as it stews.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, balancing the richness of the duck and gravy.
Shallots
Soften during stewing, adding mild sweetness and aromatic background to the sauce.
Anchovy
Melts into the sauce, adding savoury depth without a clearly fishy taste.

The step that matters

Fry the duck quarters until browned. Browning triggers Maillard reactions that create colour and roasted flavour. Pale duck stews into a sauce with less depth, so the browning should be thorough before stewing begins.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, red wine, shallot, anchovy):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, red wine, shallot, anchovy. 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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