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Roast Duck with Cherries

A roasted duck served with a sauce of cherries, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Roast Duck with Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the duck

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the duck inside and out with salt and pepper.

Roast and make the sauce

  1. Place the duck in a roasting pan and roast for about 1 hour.

  2. In a saucepan, combine cherries, sugar, and butter; cook until cherries are soft.

Serve

  1. Serve the duck with the cherry sauce on top.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Duck
Provides the main meat, and its fat renders out during roasting to keep the meat moist.
Cherries
Supply the fruity flavor and tartness that the sauce is built around.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the cherries.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the cherries until soft. Heat breaks down the fruit's structure, so the cherries soften and release juice that thickens into a sauce. Stopping too early leaves firm fruit and a thin, uneven sauce.

“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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