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Salmi of Duck

A 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 bones and giblets in a saucepan and cover with hot water.

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

  3. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture, then cool it to remove any fat on top.

Cook the duck and thicken

  1. Return the strained liquid to the heat and add the duck pieces.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, adding water if needed.

  3. Brown the flour and butter together.

  4. Stir the browned mixture into the duck mixture and let it boil.

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

Serve

  1. Arrange the duck on a platter.

  2. 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
Provides the main meat and rich flavour that the soup is built around.
Bones and giblets
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the water, giving the stock body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock as it cooks slowly.
Flour
Thickens the soup when browned with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness while browning, adding nutty aroma.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after straining. Fat left on the stock makes the soup greasy and can mute its flavour. Cooling the strained liquid lets the fat rise and solidify so it can be removed.

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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