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Salmi of Duck

A clear duck broth simmered with onion, herbs, and spices, thickened with flour and butter, served with croutons or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Salmi of Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Put the duck bones and giblets in a saucepan and cover with hot water.

  2. When it boils, add the sliced onion, cloves, herbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover and cook slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture and cool it to remove any fat that rises to the top.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the strained liquid to the heat, add the duck pieces, and simmer for another hour.

  2. If needed, add more water.

  3. In a separate pan, brown the flour and butter together, then stir into the duck mixture and let it boil.

  4. Add stewed green peas just before thickening, if desired.

Serve

  1. Arrange the duck on a platter and garnish with croutons or boiled rice.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck bones and giblets
Release flavour and body into the stock as they simmer.
Duck pieces
Provide the meat and rich, savoury flavour of the soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the stock as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated with fat.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and cooks with the flour into a roux.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and butter, then stirring into the boiling soup. Cooking the flour in fat removes raw starch taste and helps it disperse. Stirring it in well and letting it boil lets the starch swell evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, flour, butter, rice. 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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