Skip to main content
Main

Salmi Op Duck

A duck dish simmered with stock, mushroom catsup, Worcestershire sauce, olives, sherry, and garnished with toasted bread and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Salmi Op Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock and gravy

  1. Simmer broken duck bones to make 1 quart of stock.

  2. Season the remaining gravy with mushroom catsup and Worcestershire sauce.

  3. If the gravy is less than 1 cup, add boiling water to make up the deficiency.

Make the salmi

  1. Heat the duck meat and olives in the gravy.

  2. Add sherry and remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Pile the meat in the center of a small platter.

  2. Pour the gravy over the meat and garnish with toasted bread triangles and parsley.

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 + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Roasted duck meat
Provides the main protein and savory, meaty flavor of the dish.
Olives
Add a salty, briny note that contrasts with the rich gravy.
Sherry
Adds a sweet, aromatic acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Duck stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, carrying body and savory depth.

The step that matters

Remove from heat after adding sherry. Sherry is a delicate, volatile aroma. Prolonged boiling drives off its alcohol and fragrance, so it should be added off the heat or at the very end.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mushroom, sauce, olive, sherry, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mushroom, sauce, olive, sherry, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes