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Duck a LA Mode

A duck dish simmered in gravy and port wine with herbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Duck a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Divide the ducks into quarters and place them in a stew pan.

  2. Sprinkle with flour, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add butter pieces to the pan and fry the ducks until light brown.

Stew and serve

  1. Remove the frying pan and add gravy and port wine.

  2. Sprinkle more flour and add sweet herbs, minced shallots, anchovy, and cayenne.

  3. Stew the ducks in the gravy until tender.

  4. Transfer the ducks to a dish, remove the herbs, and clear off any fat.

  5. Serve the ducks with the sauce poured over them.

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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the meat that is browned and then stewed until tender.
Butter
Fat for frying the duck pieces, helping them brown lightly and richly.
Flour
Dusted on the duck and added to the sauce, helping it thicken.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the gravy-based sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild savoury aroma to the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Stew the ducks in the gravy until tender. Duck meat toughens if rushed. Slow, gentle simmering in liquid breaks down connective tissue, so the meat becomes tender. Stopping too early leaves it chewy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, butter, port wine, anchovy):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Turnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, butter, port wine, anchovy. 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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