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Wild Ducks

A stuffed wild duck baked with bread crumbs, pepper, sea salt, butter, sage, onions, and optional bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the ducks.

  2. Stuff each duck with a dressing of bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, coarse sea salt, melted butter, sage, and onions; or use onions alone.

  3. Fry the onions until brown, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Place the ducks in a pan and pour in ½ pint of boiling water. Baste often and keep covered.

  2. If the ducks are young, cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour; if they are old, steam for 1 hour and then roast for 30 minutes.

  3. If the ducks are not fat, lay thin slices of bacon over the breast.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, absorbing juices and keeping the dressing moist.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stuffing and helping it brown.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma, especially when fried until brown before seasoning.
Thin slices of bacon
Add fat over the breast, helping keep lean birds moist and flavourful while roasting.

The step that matters

Basting and keeping the ducks covered. Wild duck is lean, so it dries out easily. Frequent basting with the liquid in the pan keeps the meat moist, and covering traps steam that cooks it gently.

Swap the onion

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

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

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