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Roast Duck

Roast duck seasoned with salt, butter, and flour, served with a giblet and currant jelly sauce and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Stuff the duck if preferred.

  2. Baste with hot water mixed with onion and salt for a few minutes.

  3. Baste with butter and a little flour.

  4. Roast for 1-2 hours for domestic ducks or 25-30 minutes for wild ducks.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with a sauce made from the giblets and currant jelly.

  2. Garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
The main protein, cooked through by roasting until tender.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the skin.
Flour
Combined with butter for basting, it helps the skin brown and crisp.
Giblets
Simmered into a sauce that adds savoury depth to the served duck.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich duck fat in the sauce.

The step that matters

Roast for the right time. Domestic and wild ducks differ greatly in size and fat, so the roasting time changes. Underroasting leaves the meat unsafe to eat, while overroasting dries it out and toughens the flesh.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, lemon. 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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