Name: Roast Duck
Ingredients: 1 duck; quarter apples (optional); apple sauce (for serving); cranberries (for serving)

Why it works: Apple and sauce work together. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 965 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

1 duck
quarter apples (optional)
apple sauce (for serving)
cranberries (for serving)

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

Prepare the duck as you would for roast chicken.
Optionally, stuff the duck with quartered, cored, and pared apples to reduce odor.
Bake the duck in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

Serve

Serve with apple sauce or cranberries.

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.

Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together965 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 browns in the oven.
Apples: Stuffed inside the duck, they may help reduce odor during roasting, as the record notes.

“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.