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To Roast Teal Ducks

Roasted teal ducks stuffed with bread, onions, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Teal Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and clean the ducks, then hang them for two days.

  2. Make a stuffing by mixing bread, coarse sea salt, black pepper, chopped onions, and butter.

  3. Stuff the ducks with the mixture and place them in a pan.

Roast

  1. Dredge the ducks with flour, then season with a little black pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Baste the ducks frequently while roasting.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Teal ducks
Provide the main meat of the dish.
Bread
Soaks up butter and juices in the stuffing, giving it a softer texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and helps moisten the meat.
Flour
Dredging coats the skin, helping it brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Basting the ducks frequently while roasting. Regular basting spreads fat and juices over the skin, which helps it brown and keeps the surface from drying out during roasting.

Swap the onion

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

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

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