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Salmi of Duck

A duck stock with leftover meat, olives, sherry, and toasted bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salmi of Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the duck bones and simmer them in 1 quart of water to make stock.

Season and heat the gravy

  1. Season the remaining gravy with mushroom ketchup and a few drops of Worcestershire sauce.

  2. If it is less than 1 cup, add boiling water to make up the difference.

  3. Heat the meat and olives in the gravy, then add sherry and remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Pile the meat in the center of a small platter, pour the gravy over it, and garnish with triangles of toasted bread and tufts of parsley.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover roasted duck meat
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the savory flavor.
Duck bones
Simmered in water, they release gelatin that gives the stock body and mouthfeel.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami depth to the gravy.
Olives
Contribute briny, salty bite that cuts through the richness of the duck.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the gravy.

The step that matters

Add the sherry and remove from heat. Sherry's aromatic compounds are volatile and fade with prolonged heating, so it should be stirred in at the end, off the heat. Keeping the meat and gravy from boiling also prevents the duck from toughening.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, olive, sherry, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, olive, sherry, bread. 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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