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Two Ducks Braised with Turnips

A braised duck dish cooked with turnips, onions, herbs, mace, stock, and sherry, finished with a glaze and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Two Ducks Braised with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the ducks with force-meat.

  2. Place the bones and poultry trimmings in a stewpan.

  3. Lay the ducks on top of the bones.

  4. Add the chopped onions, herbs, mace, stock, and sherry wine.

  5. Cover the ducks with bacon and paper, then cover the stewpan tightly.

Braise and reduce

  1. Cook on low heat for 2 hours.

  2. Once done, remove the ducks and strain the braise.

  3. Skim the fat and reduce the braise to a glaze.

Finish and serve

  1. Fry the scooped turnips in clarified butter.

  2. Mix a little coulis into the duck glaze and add the turnips.

  3. Bring to a boil, then serve the turnips on a dish followed by the glazed ducks.

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 + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow braising in liquid.
Bones and poultry trimmings
Release gelatin and flavour into the braise, giving the glaze body and richness.
Stock
Forms the moist braising liquid that keeps the duck from drying out.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, fatty braise.
Bacon
Lays fat over the ducks, basting the meat and adding savoury flavour during cooking.
Turnips
Browning in clarified butter gives the scooped turnips a golden, slightly sweet flavour.

The step that matters

Skim the fat and reduce the braise to a glaze. Duck releases a lot of fat, which can make the glaze greasy and dull. Skimming removes it, and gentle reduction concentrates the gelatin and flavour into a glossy, cohesive sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, sherry, wine, butter, turnip, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, sherry, wine, butter, turnip, sauce. 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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