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Roast Duck

Roast duck seasoned with breadcrumbs, sage, pepper, and onion, baked until tender and served with a currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Parboil the duck with the carrot or onion to absorb the fishy flavor.

  2. Discard the carrot or onion and soak the duck in fresh water for 30 minutes.

  3. Stuff the duck with breadcrumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, sage, and onion.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Roast the duck until brown and tender, basting for half the time with butter and water, then with drippings.

  2. After removing the duck, add currant jelly and cayenne to the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with browned flour and serve in a tureen.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, which becomes tender and browned during roasting.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up the juices and drippings inside the bird, keeping the stuffing moist.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, helping the skin brown and the meat stay moist.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the rich drippings in the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor and color.

The step that matters

Parboiling the duck. Parboiling with a carrot or onion draws out some of the strong, fishy-tasting compounds typical of wild waterfowl. Discarding the vegetable and soaking in fresh water afterward removes what remains, so the meat tastes milder.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, sage, butter, currant, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, sage, butter, currant, flour. 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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