Name: Wild Ducks
Ingredients: wild ducks; 1 small peeled carrot (or 1 whole onion); coarse sea salt; black pepper; ⅓ cup claret

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Wild Ducks

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

Parboil the wild ducks with a small peeled carrot inside each duck to absorb any unpleasant fishy taste. Alternatively, use a whole peeled onion instead of the carrot.

Roast and bake

Roast the ducks as you would tame ducks.
Stuff each duck with a whole peeled onion, plenty of coarse sea salt, black pepper, and ⅓ cup of claret.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

Serve

Serve hot with the gravy and a dish of 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.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks: The main meat, which is cooked whole and carries the flavor of the dish.
Claret: Adds acidity and wine aroma to the stuffing and the juices in the pan.
Onion: Releases aromatic flavor inside the bird during roasting.
Black pepper: Adds sharp aroma and a mild heat to the meat.

The step that matters

Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes. High oven heat browns the skin and renders fat from the duck, giving crisp skin and good colour. Because the time is short, checking doneness matters, since overcooking dries the lean meat and undercooking leaves it unsafe.

“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.