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Duck and Peas, Stewed

A stew of cold roast duck, ham or bacon, peas, onions, parsley, cloves, and gravy, seasoned with cayenne, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Duck and Peas, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Cut the duck into joints and add to the pan with the ham or bacon; brown them.

  3. Dredge in the flour and stir well before adding the gravy.

Stew

  1. Add the onions, parsley, cloves, and gravy; simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Stir in the peas and stew gently for another 15 minutes.

  3. Season with cayenne, salt, and sugar.

Serve

  1. Remove the duck, arrange it around the dish, and place the peas in the center.

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. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Cold roast duck
Provides the main cooked meat, which is gently reheated in the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the duck and ham in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the duck and peas.
Thin gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and cooks the stew.
Green peas
Adds sweetness and a fresh, tender vegetable element to the stew.
Ham or bacon
Adds savory, salty flavor and browned richness to the stew.

The step that matters

Dredging the duck in flour before adding gravy. Flour coated on the meat and stirred in before the liquid helps prevent lumps and gives the gravy a smooth, even body as it simmers.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, flour, onion, parsley, clove, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, flour, onion, parsley, clove, sugar. 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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