Skip to main content
Main

Baked Ducks

Baked Ducks stuffed with a potato, onion, and sage mixture, then roasted until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baked Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean the duck the day before cooking for better flavor.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mash the boiled Irish potatoes while hot and mix in the butter or lard.

  2. Add the chopped onion, salt, pepper, and sage to the potato mixture.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the duck's body with the potato dressing and place some on the breast.

  2. Bake the duck in the oven with the lard and water at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Potato + sagetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Forms the main body of the dish and provides rich, fatty meat that stays moist when roasted.
Irish potatoes
Bulk and starch in the dressing, which soaks up juices and keeps the stuffing moist.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for richness and helps the potatoes and duck brown in the oven.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the potato dressing as it cooks inside the bird.
Sage
Contributes a warm, herbal aroma that suits the rich duck and potato dressing.

The step that matters

Baking until cooked through. A whole duck and a dense stuffing take much longer to heat at the centre than the outside takes to brown. The skin can look finished while the thickest parts and the stuffing are still underdone, so check the deepest part of the bird before serving.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, onion, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes