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Roast Ducks

Roast Ducks is a dish of ducks stuffed with sage and onion, roasted, dredged in flour, served with brown gravy, current jelly, and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,628 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the ducks carefully.

  2. Make a stuffing with sage and onion, insert it into the ducks, and sew them up completely.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the ducks in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 1 hour, basting frequently.

  2. A few minutes before serving, lightly dredge the ducks with flour to make them froth and look plump.

  3. Serve hot with brown gravy poured over the ducks.

  4. Accompany with current jelly and green peas, if in season.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Sage + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

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

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, whose fat renders and keeps the bird moist during roasting.
Flour
Dusted on the ducks shortly before serving, it helps create a light, frothy, plump-looking surface.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks inside the duck.
Sage
Contributes a savoury, herbal aroma to the stuffing inside the duck.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during roasting. Duck skin has a thick layer of fat that must render out while the surface crisps. Regular basting spreads the rendered fat and juices over the skin, helping it brown evenly and stay moist rather than drying out.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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