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Stewed Duck

A stew of duck pieces cooked slowly with salt pork, onion, sage, and brown flour, served with green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Stewed Duck

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 ↓

Stewed Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer the salt pork in the bottom of a stew pan.

  2. Place the duck pieces on top of the pork.

Stew

  1. Cover and stew slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, sage, and chopped onion.

  3. Stew for another 30 minutes until the duck is tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the brown flour with a little water and add to the stew.

  2. Bring to a boil and serve with green peas.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, covered stewing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the stew as it renders into the pot.
Brown flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer, looser gravy when stirred in and heated.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it softens into the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the brown flour. Flour mixed with water before adding prevents lumps. It must then come to a boil so the starch swells and thickens the liquid fully.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, sage, onion, flour):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, sage, onion, 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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