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To Stew Canvas-back Ducks

A stew of canvas-back ducks with lemon rind, butter, wine, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Stew Canvas-back Ducks

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the giblet sauce

  1. Combine giblets, lemon rind, water, butter, salt, and cayenne in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and stew gently.

Cook the ducks

  1. Half roast the ducks and reserve the gravy.

  2. Cut the ducks into pieces and place them in a large stewpan with the reserved gravy (skim off the fat) and enough water to prevent burning.

  3. Cook over moderate heat until the ducks are done.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the giblets, then pour the small saucepan gravy over the ducks.

  2. Stir in the port wine and currant jelly.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through partial roasting and then gentle stewing.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the giblet sauce and adds richness.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished stew.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Cook over moderate heat until the ducks are done. Moderate heat with enough water keeps the stew from scorching while the meat slowly becomes tender. Too much heat can toughen the meat and burn the bottom of the pan.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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