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Wild Duck

A stew of wild duck marinated in vinegar and spices, then cooked with onion and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the duck joints with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Place the duck in a deep earthen bowl and pour hot vinegar over it.

  3. Add peppercorns, cloves, and a bay leaf to the vinegar.

  4. Let the duck marinate in the pickle for at least 24 hours.

Stew and thicken

  1. Remove the duck from the pickle and stew it with an onion, adding very little vinegar.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich during the long stew.
Hot vinegar
Acidic pickle that softens the meat and adds a sharp, tangy flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy with body.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Marinating the duck in the hot vinegar pickle. The acid in the vinegar slowly softens the tough connective tissue of wild duck, which is why the full marinating time matters. Cutting it short leaves the meat firm and strongly gamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, clove, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, clove, 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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