Name: Wild Ducks with Turnips
Ingredients: 1 pair wild ducks; 1 pod red pepper; 1½ dozen turnips; 1 teaspoon salt; ¾ cup butter; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1½ pints stock; ⅓ cup white wine; 2 tablespoons browned flour

Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wild Ducks with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Dust the ducks in browned flour and fry them in butter.
Add finely chopped turnips, stock, sugar, salt, and red pepper.
Cook for about 1½ hours.
Add white wine 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.

Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,252 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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: Main protein, which is browned in butter after being dusted in flour.
Browned flour: Coats the ducks so they brown well and help thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter: Fat for frying the ducks, adding browning and rich flavour.
Turnips: Vegetable that softens during the long simmer and adds body to the sauce.
Stock: Liquid that cooks the duck and turnips and forms the sauce.
White wine: Adds acidity and aroma, brightening the rich braising liquid.

Swap the turnip

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

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Leekfits better
Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sugar, white wine, 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.