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Duck, Stuffed

A whole duck filled with a veal, suet, parsley, chives, and mushroom stuffing, braised and served with chestnut ragout.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Duck, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carefully bone the duck without breaking the skin.

  2. Boil the bones in a small quantity of water and reserve the liquid for gravy.

Make the stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing by mixing veal, suet, parsley, chives, and mushrooms.

  2. Season the mixture with salt and pepper, then combine with the eggs and cream to form a paste.

Cook and serve

  1. Fill the duck with the stuffing and cook it in braise.

  2. Serve with a ragout of chestnuts prepared with the gravy from the bones.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main body of the dish, with its skin left intact during boning.
Veal
Adds body and savoury richness to the stuffing.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and tender during cooking.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing into a paste that holds its shape when cooked.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Filling and braising the duck. Stuffing a boned duck with a wet mixture can leave the filling undercooked or the skin torn. The eggs need to set, and the meat needs slow, moist heat so the stuffing and duck cook through together without drying out.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, mushroom, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, mushroom, pepper, egg, cream. 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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