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Roast Wild Duck

A roasted wild duck served with a gravy made from currant jelly, cayenne pepper, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Parboil the duck, then discard the carrot or onion.

  2. Soak the duck in fresh water for 30 minutes.

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

Roast and finish

  1. Roast the duck until brown and tender, basting for half the time with butter and water, then with the 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Is the main protein, cooked by roasting until brown and tender.
Bread crumbs
Fill the cavity, soaking up onion and seasoning flavours and adding moisture to the stuffing.
Butter
Bastes the bird, adding richness and promoting even browning on the skin.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour and deeper colour.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity that balances the rich drippings.

The step that matters

Basting the duck during roasting. Basting half the time with butter and water, then drippings, keeps the surface moist and encourages even browning. Wild duck is lean, so drying out is a real risk.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sage, onion, butter, 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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