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Caneton a LA Bigarade

Duckling cooked with lemon, orange, wine, and bacon, finished in a citrus sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a stewpan, combine the onion, celery, carrot, and bacon.

  3. Place the duckling on top of the vegetables and cover with butter.

Roast the duckling

  1. Cook the duckling for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the lid and transfer the pan to the oven to brown the duckling.

  3. Once browned, remove the duckling and strain the fat from the stewpan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add the wine and gravy to the fat and reduce over heat for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the juice of one orange and the lemon juice.

  3. Cut the orange and lemon rind into julienne strips, boil for 5 minutes, then add to the sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce over the duckling and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Orange + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together736 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duckling
Provides the main meat, whose fat renders out during roasting to flavour the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the duck skin brown evenly in the oven.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that flavours the vegetables and the pan juices.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and sweetness that balances the rich duck fat.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth when reduced with the fat and gravy.
Orange and lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oil and a slight bitterness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Strain the fat before reducing the sauce. Duck releases a lot of fat while roasting. Leaving too much in the pan makes the sauce greasy and stops it thickening properly, so the fat should be poured off before the wine and gravy are reduced.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, orange, celery, carrot, butter, wine):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, celery, carrot, butter, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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