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Braised Ducks

A dish of ducks braised with ham, onion, celery, carrot, parsley, and lemon juice, thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Ducks

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the braise

  1. Lay the ham slices in a roasting pan.

  2. Add the minced onion, chopped celery, sliced carrot, and chopped parsley on top.

  3. Clean and truss the ducks, then place them on the ham and vegetable bed.

  4. Pour boiling water over the ducks and cover the pan.

Braise

  1. Cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the ducks and strain the liquid from the pan.

  2. Let the liquid cool to remove the fat.

  3. Boil the liquid in a saucepan.

  4. Add lemon juice.

  5. Thicken with browned flour.

  6. Return the ducks to the sauce until heated through.

  7. Serve with sauce poured over.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long covered braise.
Fat corned ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that enriches the braising liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty sauce.

The step that matters

Let the liquid cool to remove the fat. Duck and ham release a lot of fat into the braising liquid. Chilling lets the fat rise and solidify so it can be lifted off, leaving a lighter sauce that thickens cleanly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, celery, carrot, parsley, lemon, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, celery, carrot, parsley, lemon, 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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