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Roast Duck

Roast duck with sage, shallot, and crust, served with currant or grape jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and flour 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 ↓

Roast Duck

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 the duck

  1. Clean, wash, and wipe the duck carefully.

  2. Mix the minced shallot and sage with the usual dressing and stuff the duck with the mixture.

  3. Sew up the duck.

  4. Reserve the giblets for gravy.

Roast

  1. Roast the duck at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour, basting well.

  2. Make a crust with flour and water and spread the crust over the duck.

  3. Roast the duck for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the crust to brown the duck before it is done.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim the gravy.

  2. Chop the giblets finely and add them to the gravy with a chopped shallot and a spoonful of browned flour.

  3. Serve the duck with currant or grape jelly.

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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Shallot + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + curranttop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat and rendered fat that browns and flavors the dish.
Shallot
Adds a mild, aromatic onion flavor to the stuffing and the gravy.
Sage
Contributes an herbal, aromatic flavor that complements the rich duck meat.
Flour
Forms a crust that helps protect the duck and encourages browning when removed.

The step that matters

Remove the crust to brown the duck before it is done. Timing matters: removing the crust too early leaves the skin pale, while removing it too late can overbrown or dry the surface before the interior is cooked through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, sage, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, sage, flour. 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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