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Fricassee of Duck

A stew of cooked duck meat simmered in a gravy made from its bones and skin, finished with beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee of Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cooked duck.

  2. Slice the breast and divide the joints.

  3. Crack the bones and place them, along with the skin and any gristly bits, into a saucepan.

Make the gravy

  1. Cover the bones with 1 cup of cold water.

  2. Simmer until a cup of gravy is extracted.

  3. Strain the gravy.

  4. Season the gravy with salt and pepper.

Finish and thicken

  1. Add the sliced duck to the gravy.

  2. Place the saucepan in a pot of hot water.

  3. Heat the mixture until it is almost boiling.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs.

  5. Cover the saucepan. Let it sit in the hot water for five minutes without boiling.

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. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Beaten eggs
Coagulate when gently heated, thickening the gravy into a silky, set texture.
Duck bones and skin
Release gelatin and fat into the water, giving the gravy body and richness.
Meat from cooked duck
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the dish.

The step that matters

Let it sit in the hot water without boiling. Egg proteins set gently at temperatures below boiling. Boiling can curdle the eggs and make the gravy grainy, so the mixture should stay just under a simmer.

“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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