Skip to main content
Main

Roast Duck with Apples

Roast duck served with apples, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,026 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Duck with Apples

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

  1. Pluck and singe the duck, then draw it without breaking the intestines.

  2. Wipe the duck with a wet towel and place it in a baking pan.

  3. Wipe the apples with a wet cloth, core them without breaking, and arrange them around the duck.

Roast and serve

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and quickly brown the duck.

  2. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (175°C) and cook for about 20 minutes until the apples are tender but not broken.

  3. Baste the duck and apples every 5 minutes until done, then serve them on the same dish.

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. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 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

Duck
Provides the main meat and rendered fat that browns and flavours the dish.
Sour apples
Their acidity balances the rich duck fat and they soften as they cook.

The step that matters

Keep the apples whole while they cook. Coring without breaking the fruit and cooking them gently keeps their shape; high heat or rough handling makes apples collapse into mush before they turn tender.

“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.

You might also like

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes