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Duck Roasted

Roasted duck served with currant jelly and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Duck Roasted

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Clean the duck with a wet cloth, then dry it with a dry cloth.

  2. If the duck has a strong flavor, place an onion inside and parboil for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the onion and plunge the duck into cold water, then take it out immediately.

Roast

  1. Stuff the duck and roast it like chicken.

  2. Add a lump of butter to the dripping pan with hot water and baste frequently.

Serve

  1. Carve the duck into thick pieces and serve with currant jelly and celery.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + celerytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Currant + celerytop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
The main protein, whose fat renders out and whose skin browns during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the dripping pan liquid brown and flavour the bird.
Currant jelly
Its sweetness and acidity balance the rich, fatty duck meat.

The step that matters

Plunge the duck into cold water and remove it at once. A brief cold dip after parboiling stops the cooking and firms the skin, which helps it crisp later. Leaving the duck in the water would cook the meat further and make the skin soft and loose.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, currant, celery):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, currant, celery. 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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