Skip to main content
Main

To Roast a Canvasback Duck

A roasted canvasback duck seasoned with salt, cayenne, and butter, served with a currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast a Canvasback Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pluck, singe, draw, and wipe the duck well. Do not wash it.

  2. Season the duck with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

Roast

  1. Roast the duck in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes, basting with butter and a little water.

  2. Transfer the duck to a hot platter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add currant jelly and a dash of cayenne pepper to make gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour if desired.

  3. Serve immediately after roasting.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

Canvasback duck
Provides the main meat and the fat that renders during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown while basting.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich duck drippings in the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Serve immediately after roasting. Duck fat begins to set and the skin loses its crispness as it cools, so the bird is best carved and served while hot.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes