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Stewed Duck

A duck stew made with water, onions, herbs, and port wine, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Stewed Duck

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Place the giblets in a stew pan and cover with water to make gravy.

  2. Add the chopped onions, parsley, cloves, sage, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer the gravy until strong.

Stew the duck

  1. Add the duck pieces and cover the pot.

  2. Stew slowly for 2 hours, adding boiling water as needed.

  3. Stir in the port wine and the lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Transfer the duck to a warm platter.

  2. Pour the gravy around it.

  3. Garnish with croutons.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing in liquid.
Onions
Break down during simmering to add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the gravy until strong. The gravy's flavour comes from concentrating the giblets, aromatics and water by simmering. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weak, and the duck cannot take on its flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, clove, sage, pepper, port wine, lemon, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, clove, sage, pepper, port wine, lemon, bread. 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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