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Mock Duck

A stuffed round steak baked or stewed, flavored with breadcrumbs, onion, butter, suet, salt, pepper, and optional sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mock Duck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, chopped onion, butter, suet or dripping, salt, pepper, and sage.

  3. Spread the stuffing over the round steak.

  4. Roll the steak around the stuffing and tie it with string in several places.

Cook

  1. If the steak is tough, steam or stew it until tender before roasting.

  2. Roast in the oven until brown, or cook in a covered dish with water or stock around it.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the outer meat wrap, and its connective tissue becomes tender with slow moist cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb fat and juices, giving the stuffing a moist, soft body.
Suet or dripping
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and carries flavour during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the stuffing brown in the oven.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens in the stuffing.

The step that matters

Tenderising the steak before roasting. Round steak is a tough cut with a lot of connective tissue. Steaming or stewing it slowly breaks that tissue down into gelatin, so the rolled meat becomes tender. Roasting it straight away would leave it chewy.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, butter, 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.

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