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Wild Duck

A stuffed duck breast dish with veal, mushrooms, bread, and espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,700 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Chop veal, mushrooms, and bread finely.

  2. Soak the bread in cold water briefly, then mix with veal and mushrooms.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and garlic to taste.

Stuff and brown the duck

  1. Remove the breasts from the duck on either side.

  2. Spread the dressing on the duck breasts, roll them up, and tie securely.

  3. Place the stuffed duck breasts in a pan with a little butter and salt.

  4. Bake until nicely browned.

Braise and serve

  1. Add ½ cup of Rhine wine.

  2. Let it simmer for two minutes.

  3. Cover with espagnole sauce.

  4. Cook slowly for forty minutes.

  5. Serve hot with croutons.

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. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meaty body of the stuffing, holding its texture when cooked.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savoury depth to the stuffing.
Bread
Soaked and mixed in, it binds the stuffing and keeps it moist.
Rhine wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it simmers and reduces.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the duck brown in the pan.
Espagnole sauce
Provides a rich, savoury liquid that flavours and moistens the duck as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for forty minutes. Slow cooking in liquid breaks down the connective tissue in the duck and keeps the meat tender; cooking too fast or too hot toughens it and dries out the stuffing.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, bread, pepper, butter, wine, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Garlicthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, bread, pepper, butter, wine, 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.

More wild duck recipes

Roasted 111Stew 21Sauce 12Roast 11Roast 9Hash 6 See all 13 →

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