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Wild Duck

A roasted wild duck served with a glaze of butter, port wine, pepper, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the duck by twisting each leg at the knuckle and resting the claws on each side of the breast, securing them with a skewer through the thighs and wings.

  2. Rub the liver over the breast.

Roast and carve

  1. Roast the duck until underdone.

  2. Slice the breast without detaching the slices, catching the escaping gravy in a saucepan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add the piece of glaze to the saucepan and heat it.

  2. Once hot, add the butter, port wine, coarsely-ground pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Shake over the heat until the butter melts.

  4. Pour the sauce over the duck and serve when perfectly cold.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Walnut + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, whose rich fat and juices flavour the dish.
Glaze
Adds concentrated savoury body and a glossy finish to the sauce.
Butter
Emulsifies into the pan juices, giving the sauce a smooth, glossy richness.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fat and sweet port.

The step that matters

Shaking the butter into the hot sauce. Adding butter to hot liquid and swirling it in off the heat helps form a smooth emulsion; if the sauce is too hot or left to boil, the butter can separate and turn greasy.

“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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