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Salmi of Duck, Cooking School Style

A roasted duck stew with celery, tomatoes, and a tomato‑ketchup sauce, served with toast squares and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Salmi of Duck, Cooking School Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Singe, wash, and draw the ducks. Remove the legs and wings, then separate the breast and back into four pieces.

  2. Arrange the duck pieces in a baking pan. Sprinkle with celery, pepper, and bay leaves.

  3. Dissolve salt in chicken stock. Bring the stock to a boil. Pour the stock over the duck.

Roast

  1. Cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 hours, basting and turning halfway through.

  2. When tender, the pan should be dry.

  3. Remove the duck and set aside.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the same pan, add butter and flour, mix well. Stir in water or stock until boiling.

  2. Add tomato ketchup, salt, and pepper. Stir in soaked pimolas and mushrooms if using.

  3. Pour the sauce over the duck. Garnish with toast squares and a dollop of jelly. Serve immediately.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the meat, which becomes tender through long, moist oven cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries the flavour of the pan juices.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Chicken stock
Provides liquid that cooks the duck and forms the base of the sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour before adding liquid. Mixing flour into fat and stirring it well before adding liquid lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, chicken, butter, flour, ketchup, mushroom):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, chicken, butter, flour, ketchup, mushroom. 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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