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Duck Soup

A hearty soup made with minced roast duck, herbs, butter, stock, wine, green pepper, barley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Duck Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mince the cold roast duck with parsley, bay leaf, and thyme.

  2. Fry the mixture in butter until fragrant.

Make the soup

  1. Add beef stock thickened with flour and stir in white wine.

  2. Simmer the soup for one hour, then strain through a sieve.

  3. Fry the sliced green pepper in butter and add to the soup.

  4. Stir in boiled barley and pieces of duck meat.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and heat thoroughly before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Beef + barleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast duck
Provides the main meat flavour and body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the beef stock so the soup has a fuller body.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness when frying.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the stock.
Boiled barley
Adds chewy texture and bulk to the soup.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock with flour. Flour must be fully incorporated into the cold or warm stock before simmering; if it is added in lumps it stays floury and the soup can become unevenly thick. Simmering then cooks out the raw flour taste.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, butter, beef, flour, white wine, pepper, barley):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Rosemaryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, butter, beef, flour, white wine, pepper, barley. 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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