Skip to main content
Main

Roast Duck

Roast Duck is a whole duck seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, roasted until cooked and served with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Grape and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the duck

  1. Pick the duck.

  2. Singe the duck.

  3. Draw the duck.

  4. Wash the duck.

  5. Wipe the duck.

  6. Truss the duck.

Roast

  1. Dredge the duck with salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Roast the duck in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes for a young duck, or 1 hour for a full-grown duck, basting every 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Make a giblet gravy.

  2. Serve with grape or currant 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. Grape + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Pepper + grapetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main protein and rich fat that renders and bastes the meat as it roasts.
Flour
Dusting on the skin helps it brown and crisp in the hot oven.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw flavour through the skin.

The step that matters

Roast the duck in a hot oven. Duck skin holds a thick layer of fat that must render slowly and evenly; basting every 10 minutes helps keep the meat moist and the skin browned. Cooking too long dries the lean meat, so timing should match the duck's age and size.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, grape. 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.

More roast duck recipes

Olive Sauce for 3with Apples 3 See all 98 →

You might also like

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes