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Salmi De Caneton

A roasted duck is simmered with sage, onion, and stock, then baked in a bag with port and olive peel, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Salmi De Caneton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Join the cold roast duck neatly.

  2. In a clean, enamelled iron stewpan, combine the duck carcass, giblets, bones, sage, onion, sweet herbs, and stock.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim carefully, then simmer slowly until the flavors are extracted.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan and reduce by one-third over heat.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, add olive peel and port.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a bag thickly, place the duck joints inside, and cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the bag from the oven and pour in the gravy, then close the bag and heat for another 10 minutes.

  3. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with fried croutons and accompanied by chipped or straw potatoes.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Sage + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,138 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the meat and the bones and carcass that flavour the gravy.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, carrying flavour from the bones and herbs.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth to the reduced gravy.
Onion
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the gravy as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmering the gravy slowly. Boiling vigorously makes the stock cloudy and can break down fats unevenly, while slow simmering extracts flavour cleanly. Skimming removes impurities that would otherwise muddy the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, clove, pepper, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, clove, pepper, olive. 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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