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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck is a dish of seasoned ducks roasted with fat pork and served with olive or orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roast Wild Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Dress and clean the ducks, then truss them like a goose.

  2. Place the ducks on a rack or on thin slices of fat salt pork in a dripping pan.

  3. Sprinkle the ducks with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Cover the breasts with very thin slices of fat salt pork.

Roast and serve

  1. Bake in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 35 minutes.

  2. Baste every five minutes with the drippings.

  3. Remove strings and skewers.

  4. Place the ducks on a hot serving platter.

  5. Serve with Olive or Orange sauce and optional jelly.

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. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Olive + plumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + plumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pork + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,716 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the meat that is roasted until cooked through and tender.
Fat salt pork
Bastes the birds in their own fat, adding moisture and helping keep the breast from drying.
Drippings (in the method)
Basting liquid that carries fat and browning flavour back over the skin.

The step that matters

Basting every five minutes. Wild duck is lean, so its breast can dry out quickly in a very hot oven. Regular basting with drippings keeps the surface moist and encourages even browning of the skin.

Swap the plum

The recipe marks plum as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, olive, apple):

  1. Plumthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, olive, apple. 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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