Skip to main content
Main

Roasted Duck

Roasted duck stuffed with celery and onion, cooked in an oven until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Roasted 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

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

  2. Remove the gills from the ducks and place them in a roasting pan.

Roast and serve

  1. Stuff each duck with chopped celery and onion, then remove before serving.

  2. Roast the ducks for 1 hour and 15 minutes, basting every 10 minutes.

  3. Ensure the ducks are cooked through before serving.

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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Young ducks
The main protein, whose fat renders during roasting and keeps the meat moist.
Celery
Aromatic stuffing that perfumes the bird from inside as it cooks.
Onion
Aromatic stuffing that adds savory flavor to the bird's interior.

The step that matters

Ensure the ducks are cooked through before serving. Poultry must reach a fully cooked internal temperature to be safe to eat. Thick areas like the thighs and breast cook more slowly than the rest, so an undercooked centre can remain even when the skin looks well browned. Checking the thickest parts confirms the bird is done.

“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.

More roasted duck recipes

You might also like