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Roast Duck

Roast duck with onion, butter, flour, lemon, currant jelly, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the duck

  1. Pick the crop, oil bag, legs, and pinions from the duck.

  2. Singe the duck.

  3. Place half an onion inside the body of the duck.

  4. Wipe the duck.

  5. Truss the duck.

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

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

  2. Squeeze the juice of one lemon over the duck before serving.

  3. Serve with currant jelly and gravy made as for turkey.

Make the port sauce

  1. Melt the butter. Add the currant jelly. Pour in the port wine. Bring to a boil.

  2. Serve with a sauce of equal parts butter, currant jelly, and port wine.

  3. Serve with the duck.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Onion + peppertop 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. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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
Provides the main meat, with fat that renders during roasting.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown during roasting.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the accompanying sauce.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the sauce as it reduces.

The step that matters

Roasting in a very hot oven. A very hot oven helps render the duck's fat and crisp the skin. Too low a heat leaves the fat under the skin and makes the skin soft and greasy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, port wine):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, port wine. 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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