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Salmi of Ducks

A duck dish with sliced meat served over fried toast, thickened with a gravy made from duck bones, skin, and stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,404 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salmi of Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Cut the meat from the bones into uniform slices.

  2. Make a gravy by boiling the bones, skin, and stuffing with 1 quart of water until reduced to 1 cup.

  3. Skim and strain the gravy into a saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lemon juice and enough browned flour to thicken the gravy.

  2. Stir until smooth and add the sliced duck.

  3. Warm slowly without boiling.

  4. Serve hot over oblong slices of fried toast.

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. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck meat
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the dish.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the duck and toast.
Duck bones, skin, and stuffing
Simmered to make the concentrated gravy that gives the dish its flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory gravy.

The step that matters

Warm slowly without boiling. Boiling a flour-thickened gravy after the duck is added can break the sauce and toughen the meat, so gentle heat keeps it smooth and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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