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Dinner. — Roast Ducks

Roast Ducks is a dish of roasted ducks served with potatoes, sprouts, gooseberry tart, and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Dinner. — Roast Ducks

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 the ducks

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

  2. Season the ducks with coarse sea salt.

  3. Roast the ducks in the oven until cooked through.

Prepare the sides

  1. Prepare the stuffing and cook it according to your recipe.

  2. Boil the new potatoes until tender.

  3. Steam or boil the sprouts until bright green.

Serve

  1. Serve with gooseberry tart and custard made from eggs and milk.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Potato + gooseberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl isobutyrate (flower).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Gooseberry + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, whose fat renders and crisps the skin during roasting.
Eggs
Thicken the custard by setting as their proteins coagulate with gentle heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks until cooked through. Duck has a lot of fat under the skin and dense meat, so it can look done on the outside while the inside is still undercooked. Checking that the meat is fully cooked, and letting the fat render, matters for both safety and texture.

Swap the gooseberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Gooseberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, milk. 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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