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Wild Ducks with Olives

A stew of wild ducks simmered with olives, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Wild Ducks with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Wash the ducks inside and out with vinegar and water, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  2. In a deep pot, heat the butter and olive oil over medium heat and fry the ducks until browned.

Braise with olives

  1. Add the minced parsley, browned flour, and stock to the pot, cover, and cook for about 1 hour.

  2. Stir in the olives and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, moist cooking in the pot.
Olives
Add a salty, briny flavour that balances the rich duck fat and stock.
Stock
Supplies the liquid for braising, keeping the meat moist and building the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the ducks brown and contributing richness.
Olive oil
Adds fat for frying so the duck browns evenly without sticking.

The step that matters

Browning the ducks. Frying the ducks until well browned creates Maillard flavour compounds that carry through the whole braise. Pale ducks give a flat, greyish result, so the surface needs real colour before the liquid goes in.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, butter, flour, pepper. 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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