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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck is a dish where ducks are trussed, seasoned, and baked with fat pork, served with sauce and optional jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roast Wild 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

  1. Dress and clean the ducks, then truss them like a goose.

  2. Place the ducks on a rack or on thin slices of fat salt pork in a dripping pan.

  3. Sprinkle the ducks with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Cover the breasts with very thin slices of fat salt pork.

Roast and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 35 minutes, basting every 5 minutes with the drippings.

  2. Remove strings and skewers, then place the ducks on a hot serving platter.

  3. Serve with Olive or Orange sauce, and optionally with jelly.

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. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

  2. Olive + plumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + plumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Pork + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,716 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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 is roasted whole until cooked through.
Fat salt pork
Bastes the birds with melting fat, keeping the lean meat moist and adding flavor.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 35 minutes, basting every 5 minutes with the drippings.. Wild duck is lean and dries out quickly at high heat. Regular basting with the drippings keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly.

Swap the plum

The recipe marks plum as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, olive, apple):

  1. Plumthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, olive, apple. 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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