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Wild Ducks Roasted

Roasted wild ducks prepared by parboiling, stuffing with breadcrumbs, onion, pepper, salt, sage, and butter, then roasting until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Wild Ducks Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the ducks for roasting like any fowl.

  2. Parboil the ducks for 15 minutes with an onion in the water.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the ducks with bread crumbs, minced onion, and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sage.

  2. Roast the ducks until tender, basting frequently with butter.

  3. Roast for about 30 minutes for young ducks.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices inside the cavity, keeping the stuffing moist and lightly flavored.
Butter
Basting with butter adds fat that promotes browning and a richer, moister surface.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the parboiling water and the stuffing.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks until tender, basting frequently with butter. Wild duck is lean, so it can dry out or toughen if overcooked. Frequent basting with butter adds fat that helps keep the surface moist and encourages even browning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, bread, pepper, sage, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, bread, pepper, sage, butter. 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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