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To Roast Wild Ducks

A method for roasting wild ducks with bread soaked in wine, butter, and fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak a bit of soft bread in port wine or claret and place it inside the ducks.

  2. Flour the ducks well and position them near a clear, brisk fire to brown quickly.

Roast

  1. Baste the ducks constantly with melted butter.

  2. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes for general preference; adjust time for those who prefer it less cooked.

  3. For teal, roast for 10 to 15 minutes for a fashionable serving, or 20 minutes for well-done.

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. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Bread + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which browns and cooks quickly over a hot fire.
Soft bread
Soaked in wine and placed inside, it adds moisture and absorbs flavour during roasting.
Port wine or claret
Adds fruity, acidic flavour to the bread stuffing and gently perfumes the bird.
Butter
Basting with melted butter adds fat that promotes browning and keeps the surface moist.

The step that matters

Basting constantly with melted butter. Frequent basting keeps the lean surface of the duck from drying out while fat helps it brown evenly, so the bird stays juicy.

“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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