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Orange Sauce for Ducks and Wild Fowl

A citrusy sauce made with Seville orange rind, juice, sherry, white stock, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sherry work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange Sauce for Ducks and Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Boil the yellow rind of the oranges until tender.

  2. Cut the rind into thin strips about ½ inch long.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the strained juice of the oranges over the strips.

  2. Add the sherry or Madeira and white stock.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 to 6 minutes.

  4. Add cayenne and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve very 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. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Seville oranges
Their juice and rind supply the sharp acidity and bitter aroma that define the sauce.
Sherry or madeira
Adds sweetness and depth, and its acidity balances the rich flavour of the duck.
White stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the flavours and thins the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce gently. Boiling hard for too long can reduce the liquid too far and make the sauce bitter or sticky, while gentle heat keeps the juice bright and the rind strips tender.

“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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