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Roast Wild Duck

A roasted wild duck served with a sauce of Worcestershire, mushroom catsup, mustard, and lemon, accompanied by toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Wild Duck

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 the duck

  1. Do not dress the wild duck too soon after killing; keep it for several days in cold weather.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Bake the duck for 5 to 10 minutes without basting to retain the gravy.

  4. Baste frequently with butter and water for 30 to 40 minutes until cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine Worcestershire sauce, mushroom catsup, salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice in a small saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture, then remove from heat and stir in prepared mustard.

  3. Pour the sauce into a hot gravy boat.

Serve

  1. Serve on a very hot dish with a cut lemon.

  2. If using teal, serve each on a slice of toast roasted before the fire.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the meat, which is cooked through by dry roasting and basting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the skin while basting.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Bake without basting at first. Basting too early can wash the surface and cool the oven-heated skin, so the duck browns unevenly and loses the gravy it holds. Wait the short initial period before basting frequently.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, mushroom, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, mushroom, pepper, lemon. 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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