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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck stuffed with carrots and celery, seasoned with sea salt and cayenne pepper, topped with bacon, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Roast Wild Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the duck carefully and fill it with sliced carrots and celery.

  2. While damp, rub the duck with coarse sea salt.

  3. Arrange the duck in a roasting pan and place small slices of bacon on top.

  4. Sprinkle a dash of cayenne pepper over the duck.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a closed pan in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with baked apples.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, whose fat and juices keep the flesh moist during roasting.
Bacon
Its fat bastes the duck as it cooks, adding moisture and savoury browning to the skin.
Carrots and celery
Their moisture and aromatic flavour perfume the duck from inside as it roasts.

The step that matters

Roast in a closed pan in a hot oven. Wild duck is lean and can dry out quickly. A hot oven browns the skin and renders fat, while a closed pan traps steam so the meat stays juicy. Watch the timing closely.

“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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