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Wild Duck

A duck breast stuffed with veal, mushrooms, and bread, baked with wine and espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,700 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the veal, mushrooms, and soaked bread finely.

  2. Mix the chopped ingredients and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and garlic.

Stuff and roll the duck

  1. Remove the breast from the duck on either side.

  2. Spread the dressing on the duck breast, roll it up, and tie it.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolled duck in a pan with a little butter and salt.

  2. Bake until nicely browned.

  3. Add ½ cup of Rhine wine and let it simmer for two minutes.

  4. Cover with espagnole sauce and cook slowly for forty minutes.

  5. Serve hot with croutons.

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. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving it a meaty, firm texture once cooked.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy savour to the stuffing.
Bread
Soaked bread binds the chopped filling and keeps it moist.
Rhine wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the pan liquid, deepening the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover with espagnole sauce and cook slowly for forty minutes. Slow, gentle cooking in liquid lets the connective tissue in the duck and veal soften while the sauce reduces and thickens. Too much heat can toughen the meat and scorch the sauce on the base of the pan.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, bread, pepper, butter, wine, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Garlicthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, bread, pepper, butter, wine, sauce. 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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