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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: Sage and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 37 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sage + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together37 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,491 recipes

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + sagetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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