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Wild Duck

A stew of wild duck marinated and cooked with vinegar, onion, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Season the duck joints with salt and pepper and place them in a deep earthen bowl.

  2. Pour hot vinegar over the duck and add peppercorns, cloves, and a bay leaf.

  3. Let the duck marinate in the vinegar for at least 24 hours.

Stew and thicken

  1. Remove the duck from the marinate and stew it with an onion, adding very little vinegar.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through stewing after marinating.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade softens the meat and gives the stew a sharp, tangy flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stewing liquid as it cooks down.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the duck instead of running thin.

The step that matters

Adding very little vinegar during stewing. Vinegar is strongly acidic and, reduced over long cooking, it can turn the stew harsh and overpowering. Adding only a little keeps the marinade tang balanced with the duck and onion.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, clove, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, clove, 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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