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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck is a dish prepared by baking a wild duck with butter, water, and a sauce of Worcestershire, mushroom ketchup, mustard, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Wild 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 and roast

  1. Do not dress the wild duck too soon after killing; keep it for several days in cold weather.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Bake the duck for 5 to 10 minutes without basting to retain the gravy.

  4. Baste frequently with butter and water for 30 to 40 minutes until cooked.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a small saucepan, combine Worcestershire sauce, mushroom ketchup, salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture, then remove from heat and stir in prepared mustard.

  3. Serve on a very hot dish with a cut lemon.

  4. Pour the sauce into a hot gravy boat.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which is cooked by roasting until done.
Butter
Bastes the bird, adding fat and helping the skin brown.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury umami flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Baste frequently only after the initial roast. Basting only after the first few minutes without basting keeps the juices in the bird for the gravy, while frequent basting with butter and water adds fat and moisture that keep the meat from drying out as it finishes cooking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, mustard):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, mustard. 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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