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Roast Ducks and Geese

A roasted duck or goose served with currant jelly, apple sauce, and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Ducks and Geese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Prepare your preferred filling, seasoning it with sage, chopped onion, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Stuff the duck or goose with the filling.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast young ducks for 25 to 30 minutes, or full-grown ones for 2 hours, basting frequently.

  2. If using an old fowl, parboil it before roasting.

  3. Serve with currant jelly, apple sauce, and green peas.

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

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

  2. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck or goose
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the rich fat and meat that roasting renders and crisps.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour that permeates the filling and meat.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and moisture to the stuffing as it softens and flavours the bird.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during roasting. Basting spreads the fat and juices over the skin, helping it brown and stay moist, while the meat cooks through. Skipping it can leave the skin pale and the meat dry.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, onion, pepper, apple, sauce, peas):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, onion, pepper, apple, sauce, peas. 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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