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Duck Stewed

A stew of duck pieces simmered with ham, onion, parsley, sage, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Duck Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the duck, then cut it into pieces.

  2. Place the duck in a saucepan and cover it with cold water.

Cook

  1. Cover the saucepan tightly and heat gradually.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 to 3 hours with ham, onion, parsley, and sage.

  3. Once tender, serve the duck on slices of toast.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice before pouring over the duck.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the simmering liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Heat gradually and simmer slowly. Heating the covered pan gradually and simmering gently keeps the meat from toughening. Fast, hard boiling tightens muscle proteins and can leave the duck dry and chewy, so the slow simmer is what makes it tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, parsley, sage, flour, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, sage, flour, pepper, 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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