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Wild Ducks

A roasted wild duck stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, sage, onion, and seasonings, served with optional bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the ducks and stuff the body with a mixture of bread crumbs, pepper, salt, melted butter, sage, and chopped onion.

  2. Fry the chopped onion until brown, then season the onion with pepper and salt.

Cook

  1. Place the ducks in a pan and add ½ pint of boiling water.

  2. Cover the pan and baste the ducks often.

  3. Cook young ducks for 45 to 60 minutes.

  4. For older ducks, steam for 1 hour and then roast for 30 minutes.

  5. If the ducks are not fatty, lay thin slices of bacon over the breast before cooking.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which is cooked gently in steam and then roasted.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and holding its shape.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stuffing and helping the meat brown.
Dried sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma that complements the rich duck meat.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth when fried brown before going into the stuffing.

The step that matters

Cover the pan and baste the ducks often. Wild duck is lean, so it dries out easily. Basting with the pan liquid keeps the surface moist and the covered steaming keeps the meat tender while it cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, sage. 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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