Skip to main content
Main

Roast Duck

Roast Duck is a whole duck stuffed with sage and onion, roasted over a clear fire, served with brown gravy and optional green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,628 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the ducks at the back and secure both ends with string after stuffing one with sage and onion.

  2. Hang the ducks for a day or two if possible to ensure tenderness.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the ducks over a brisk clear fire and baste them well throughout cooking.

  2. A few minutes before serving, lightly dredge the ducks with flour to make them froth and look plump.

  3. When the steam draws towards the fire, serve the ducks hot with brown gravy poured around them, and some in a tureen.

  4. Serve with green peas when in season.

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. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Sage + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Dusting the skin with flour helps it crisp and froth, giving a plumper look.
Sage and onion stuffing
Flavours the bird from inside as it cooks, adding aroma to the meat.

The step that matters

Basting over a brisk fire. Basting throughout cooking keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly. Too little heat or basting can leave the meat dry or the skin pale.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, onion, flour):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, onion, flour. 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.

More roasted duck recipes

with Stuffing 4with Head 3 See all 113 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes