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Wild Ducks

A roast of wild ducks cooked rare with butter, flour, and onion, served with giblet gravy, currant jelly, and lemon slices.

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 ↓

Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Roast

  1. Cook wild ducks rare, with or without stuffing.

  2. Baste with hot water mixed with onion and salt for a few minutes.

  3. Remove the pan and baste with butter and a little flour to froth and brown.

  4. Cook in a hot oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown gravy made from giblets in the bottom of the dish.

  2. Accompany with currant jelly and garnish with lemon slices.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Wild ducks
Form the main meat, which cooks rare and stays tender and juicy inside.
Butter
Fat that carries heat to the skin, helping it froth and brown.
Flour
Mixed with butter, it helps the basting fat thicken and brown on the surface.
Giblets
Simmered into the brown gravy, adding deep savoury flavour to the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, gamey flavour of the duck.

The step that matters

Cook in a hot oven for 20 to 30 minutes. Wild duck is lean and cooks quickly, so a short, hot roast browns the skin while keeping the meat rare. Longer cooking dries the breast and toughens it.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, 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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