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Ducks, Stewed

A stew of duck joints simmered with onion, cloves, sage, and seasoned gravy, served with red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ducks, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If using uncooked duck, brown the joints in hot fat before stewing.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the duck with enough water to cover it.

  3. Add the chopped onion, cloves, and sage leaf.

Stew and finish the gravy

  1. Stew until the duck is cooked through.

  2. Remove the duck carefully and strain the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with brown flour and season with cayenne pepper, salt, and lime juice or sherry.

  4. Add forcemeat balls if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with red currant jelly.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sage + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 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

Duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews gently in water.
Brown flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the duck and sits well on the plate.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid as it softens.
Lime juice or sherry
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavor of the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, sage, flour, pepper, lime, red currant):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sage, flour, pepper, lime, red currant. 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 stewed duck recipes

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