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Hashed Cold Duck

A dish of seasoned duck pieces and sliced ham simmered with butter, flour, water, Madeira wine, served with boiled buttered green peas.

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 ↓

Hashed Cold Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the duck pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. In a stew pan, layer the duck and sliced ham.

Make the sauce

  1. Roll butter in flour and add to the pan with enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the Madeira wine.

Serve

  1. Remove from heat immediately and serve with boiled and buttered green peas.

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. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  3. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  5. Ham + madeira winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

Cooked duck
Provides the main meat, which is gently reheated in the sauce rather than cooked through.
Butter and flour
Flour bound with butter thickens the liquid into a smooth, rich sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and a fortified, aromatic depth to the sauce.
Cold ham
Contributes salty, savoury flavour that seasons the duck and sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately after adding the Madeira. The wine is added at the boil and the dish is taken off the heat right away. Prolonged boiling would reduce the sauce further, dull the wine's aroma and toughen the meat, so timing keeps the flavour bright and the duck tender.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ham, butter, flour, madeira wine):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ham, butter, flour, madeira wine. 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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