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Salmis of Wild Duck

A sauce made from duck trimmings, red wine, shallots, thyme, bay leaf, orange rind, lemon pulp, cayenne, and Espagnole sauce, served over duck.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmis of Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and cut

  1. Roast the wild duck over a brisk fire for about 25 minutes to retain its gravy.

  2. Place the duck on its breast in a dish to cool.

  3. Cut the duck into small joints: two fillets, two legs, and the breast and back into two pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Put the trimmings in a stewpan with red wine, shallots, thyme, bay leaf, orange rind, lemon pulp, and cayenne.

  2. Boil down the mixture to half its original quantity.

  3. Add a small ladleful of Espagnole sauce.

  4. Allow the mixture to boil.

  5. Skim the surface.

  6. Strain the sauce over the duck pieces.

Serve

  1. Warm the salmis without boiling.

  2. Dish the salmis up.

  3. Pour the sauce over the duck pieces.

  4. Garnish with croutons before serving.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Thyme + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the meat that is roasted, jointed and braised in the wine sauce.
Red wine
Reduced to concentrate flavour and add acidity to the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Adds body and rich savoury depth to the reduced wine sauce.
Shallots
Add mild aromatic sweetness that builds the flavour base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil down the mixture to half its original quantity. Reducing the wine concentrates its flavour and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weak, while over-reducing makes it salty and syrupy once the Espagnole sauce is added.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, shallot, thyme, lemon, sauce, bread):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, shallot, thyme, lemon, sauce, 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.

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