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Sauce

A Salmie of Wild Ducks

A sauce made from duck trimmings, stock, wine, butter, flour, orange juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Salmie of Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Cut up the wild ducks into legs, wings, and sliced breasts; set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine the trimmings, shallots, stock, and red wine; bring to a boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and set the liquid aside.

  3. Melt butter in a stewpan, add flour, and the strained liquid; bring to a boil and strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Return the sauce to the stewpan, bring to a boil, add orange juice and Cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the duck and keep warm by the stove without boiling.

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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide the meat and trimmings that give the sauce its rich, gamey flavour.
Shallots
Add mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock base.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the sauce's body and savoury flavour.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, reducing with the stock to a fuller flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce coats the duck.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce warm without boiling. Once thickened with flour, a sauce that boils hard can break or go grainy and lose its smooth texture. Gentle heat holds it smooth until serving.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, red wine, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, red wine, butter, flour, pepper. 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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