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Braised Ducks

A dish of young ducks braised with bacon, carrot, onion, herbs, white wine, and turnip, served with thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Braised Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the ducks

  1. Prepare the ducks as you would for roasting.

  2. Place ducks in a stew-pan with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, and pepper.

  3. Cover with broth and add white wine.

  4. Simmer over gentle heat until ducks are done, basting frequently.

  5. Remove ducks and keep them hot.

Make the gravy and turnip

  1. Cut turnip into pieces and fry in butter until browned.

  2. Drain turnip and cook in the duck braising liquid until tender.

  3. Strain and thicken the gravy.

  4. Serve ducks and pour gravy over them, garnishing with turnip pieces.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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, which becomes tender through slow, moist braising.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat to the braising liquid, enriching the flavor of the gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the braising liquid and balances the rich duck fat.
Turnip
Browns in butter for caramelized flavor, then softens in the braising liquid.
Broth
Forms the moist braising liquid that cooks the ducks and becomes the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer over gentle heat. Gentle simmering keeps the braising liquid below a hard boil, so the ducks become tender without the meat toughening or drying out. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, thyme, parsley, pepper, white wine, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, thyme, parsley, pepper, white wine, butter. 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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