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Roast Ducks

Roast ducks stuffed with mashed potatoes, sage, onion, and seasoned, then roasted with pork slices and served with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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. Clean and truss the ducks nicely.

  2. Stuff the ducks with a mixture of mashed potatoes, sage, onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Place the ducks in a roasting pan and baste them with slices of sweet fat pork.

  4. Baste frequently while roasting.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Make a rich gravy by adding Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Serve the ducks with apple sauce.

  3. For variety, stuff one duck with prunes.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, whose fat renders and crisps the skin during roasting.
Mashed potatoes
Fill the cavity and absorb rendered juices, keeping the stuffing moist.
Sweet fat pork
Slices baste the birds, adding moisture and fat that promotes browning.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and acidity to the gravy.

The step that matters

Baste frequently while roasting. Duck skin is thin and fatty, and frequent basting with rendered fat helps it brown and crisp evenly while keeping the meat moist. Letting the skin dry out or the fat burn can leave it leathery or bitter.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, sage, onion, pepper, pork, sauce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, sage, onion, pepper, pork, 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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