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Salmi of Duck

A duck soup made with roasted or braised duck, broth, and gravy, garnished with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmi of Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the duck carcass into neat dice, and chop the bones, stuffing, and skin into small pieces.

  2. Marinate the meat in salad oil and lemon juice, and refrigerate while preparing the gravy.

Make the gravy

  1. Cover the bones with cold water, add parsley, pepper, and salt, and simmer for 2 hours after boiling.

  2. Strain the broth, thicken it with browned flour mixed with butter, and add onion juice.

  3. Bring the gravy to a boil, then add the marinated meat and reduce heat to simmer without boiling.

  4. Remove the meat and arrange it on a flat dish.

  5. Add mushrooms to the gravy, simmer for 3 minutes, and pour over the meat.

Serve

  1. Garnish with fried bread.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  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

Browned flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy as its starch gelatinises with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the marinated meat.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and savoury body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the gravy without boiling once the meat is added. Boiling the gravy after the marinated meat goes in can toughen the meat and cloud the sauce. A gentle simmer cooks the meat through while keeping it tender and the gravy clear.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, parsley, pepper, flour, butter, mushroom, 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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