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Stewed Ducks

A duck stew made with jointed duck, pepper, salt, flour, onion, stock, ketchup, lemon juice, roux, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Season the jointed duck with pepper, salt, and flour.

  2. Heat dripping in a frying pan and fry the sliced onion until light brown.

  3. Remove the onion and add the duck, cooking for 10 minutes, turning two or three times.

Stew and finish

  1. In a saucepan, place the cold stock or consommé and add the jointed duck.

  2. Cover and stew slowly until tender.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, tomato ketchup, and lemon juice. Simmer for three minutes.

  4. Stir in the brown roux and cook for one minute to thicken.

  5. Add the sherry.

  6. Serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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

Duck
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Coats the duck pieces, helping to brown them and thicken the cooking liquid.
Onion
Browned first to add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Stock or consommé
Forms the moist cooking liquid that tenderises the duck and becomes the sauce.
Brown roux
A cooked flour and fat mixture that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly until tender. Gentle heat lets connective tissue in the duck break down without the meat toughening or the liquid boiling away. Rushing with a hard boil leaves the meat tough and can make the sauce reduce unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, tomato, ketchup, lemon, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, tomato, ketchup, lemon, sherry. 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.

More stewed duck recipes

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