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Two Ducks a LA Daube

A braised duck dish with stock, sherry, herbs, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and allspice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,189 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Two Ducks a LA Daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Fill the boned ducks with forced meat.

  2. Place them in a stew pan with ½ cup of stock and simmer for a few minutes.

Braise

  1. Remove the ducks and add the bones, giblets, ham, onions, sweet herbs, bay leaves, mace, allspice, 2 cups of stock, and 1 cup of sherry to the stew pan.

  2. Put the ducks back in, cover with slices of bacon and white paper to retain steam, and cover the pan.

  3. Cook on low heat for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. After cooking, remove the ducks and place them in the oven to dry.

  2. Glaze the ducks and strain the braising liquid, skimming off the fat.

  3. Reduce the liquid in a stew pan to a glaze and mix in enough coulis for the desired sauce.

  4. Add the blanched olives to the sauce, serve the sauce on a dish with olives around the sides and the ducks 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. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  3. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during slow braising with moisture and steam.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid, which reduces into the sauce.
Stock
Supplies the moist cooking liquid that braises the ducks and forms the base of the sauce.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the ducks during the covered braise.
Olives
Add a briny, savory counterpoint to the rich sauce and duck.

The step that matters

Cook on low heat for 1 hour. Gentle, low heat keeps the braising liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too fast. Slow, covered cooking breaks down connective tissue while keeping the duck moist.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, onion, allspice, sherry, sauce, olive):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, onion, allspice, sherry, sauce, olive. 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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