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Wild Ducks Stewed

A stew of parboiled wild ducks simmered with veal, gravy, herbs, and a creamy lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wild Ducks Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Parboil the ducks for 10 minutes.

  2. Soak in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Cut the ducks into joints, season with salt and pepper, and dust with flour.

  4. Fry the joints in butter until light brown.

Stew

  1. Place the fried ducks in a stew-pan and cover with gravy made from giblets, neck, and veal.

  2. Add minced shallot, sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover and stew for 30 minutes or until tender.

  4. Remove the ducks, skim the gravy, and strain it.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix cream or milk with a beaten egg, then thicken with brown flour.

  2. Slowly stir in lemon juice to prevent curdling.

  3. Boil the sauce and pour it over the ducks before serving.

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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through parboiling and slow stewing.
Butter
Fat for frying the joints, helping them brown and develop savoury flavour.
Flour
Dusted on the joints and used to thicken the sauce.
Egg
Binds the cream or milk so the sauce becomes richer and thicker.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and body to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce, balancing its richness.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice to the cream and egg. Acid can curdle a mixture containing egg and dairy proteins if it is added quickly. Stirring the juice in slowly keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, veal, cream, egg, wine):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, veal, cream, egg, wine. 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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