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Roast Ducks

Roast ducks stuffed with bread crumbs, salt, pepper, sage, onion, and giblets, then roasted and served with a thickened fat sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Prepare a stuffing with bread crumbs, coarse sea salt, black pepper, sage, and 2 teaspoons of chopped onion.

  2. Stuff and truss the ducks.

  3. Roast the ducks for about 1 hour, basting frequently.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off the fat from the dripping pan.

  2. Thicken the remaining fat with 1 tablespoon of browned flour mixed with cold water.

  3. Add the boiled giblets, chopped finely.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the stuffing and soak up juices, keeping it moist.
Browned flour
Its starch thickens the reserved duck fat into a gravy.
Chopped onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the stuffing.
Sage
Adds a warm, herbal aroma to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Thickening the fat with flour and cold water. Mixing the flour with cold water first disperses it so it does not clump when it meets hot fat. Starch only thickens smoothly once it is evenly spread through the liquid and heated, so lumps are the usual failure.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, sage, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sage, flour. 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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