Skip to main content
Main

Roast Ducks

Roast ducks seasoned with onion, sage, salt, pepper, dredged in flour, basted with butter, served with brown gravy and apple sauce.

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

Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Roast Ducks

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. Hang the ducks for one day in a cool place.

  2. Stuff one duck with chopped onion, sage, salt, and pepper.

  3. Season the inside of the other duck with salt and pepper.

Roast

  1. Place both ducks in the oven at 400°F (200°C) and baste them constantly until cooked through.

  2. A few minutes before serving, dredge the ducks with flour and baste with butter to brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the ducks hot with brown gravy poured around them and apple sauce on the side.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Flour and butter 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

Ducks
The main protein; their fat renders during roasting, keeping the meat moist and the skin crisp.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks inside the stuffed duck.
Sage
Adds an aromatic herbal flavor to the stuffing.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the skin brown and crisp.
Butter
Fat that enriches flavor and promotes browning when basted over the skin.

The step that matters

Dredging and basting just before serving. Flour and butter brown quickly in a hot oven, so they can scorch if left too long. Timing this final step a few minutes before serving gives golden skin without burning the coating.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sage, pepper, flour, butter, sauce. 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.

More roast duck recipes

Olive Sauce for 3with Apples 3 See all 98 →

You might also like

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes