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Roast Ducks

A roasted duck stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings, served with a gravy made from its giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Clean the duck thoroughly and rinse with soda and water.

  2. Soak the duck in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Wipe the duck dry.

  4. Mix bread crumbs with butter, pepper, salt, onion juice, and sage.

  5. Stuff the duck with the bread crumb mixture.

  6. Dredge the duck with salt, pepper, and flour.

Roast and baste

  1. Pour boiling water over the duck.

  2. Roast the duck covered for 12 minutes per pound for rare, or 15 minutes for well done.

  3. Baste the duck four times.

  4. Baste the duck the last time with butter.

  5. Dredge the duck with flour.

  6. Brown the duck.

Make the gravy

  1. Chop the giblets for the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Duck
Is the main protein, cooked whole and basted to keep the meat moist as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Fill the cavity, absorbing juices and adding body to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the skin brown and the duck stay moist.
Flour
Coats the skin to help it brown and, once browned, thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Roast the duck covered for 12 minutes per pound for rare, or 15 minutes for well done.. Timing per pound decides doneness, and a whole bird's weight must be known to calculate it correctly. Undercooking leaves the meat unsafe, while overcooking dries it out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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