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Salmis of Wild Duck

A sauce made from roasted wild duck, shallots, parsley, pepper, bay leaf, stock, wine, broth, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmis of Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut off the best parts of the roasted wild ducks.

  2. Place the remaining meat in a mortar with shallots, parsley, pepper, and bay leaf. Pound the ingredients well.

  3. Transfer to a saucepan with stock, white wine, broth, and nutmeg. Reduce the mixture by half and strain it.

Serve

  1. Arrange the duck pieces on a dish and cover with the sauce.

  2. Keep warm, but do not boil, until ready to serve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Roasted wild ducks
Provide the main meat and flavour for the sauce and the served pieces.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and savoury depth when pounded into the base.
Stock
Supplies liquid that reduces into a concentrated, flavourful sauce body.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich duck flavour.

The step that matters

Keep warm, but do not boil. Boiling a sauce after it has been reduced and strained can cause it to break or become cloudy and greasy, and can toughen the duck meat it covers. Gentle warmth keeps it smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, parsley, pepper, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, parsley, pepper, white 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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