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Stewed Duck and Turnips

A stew of duck and turnips cooked with butter, sugar, flour, parsley, onion, bay leaf, gravy, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,842 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Duck and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut turnips into small balls.

  2. Toss turnips in butter and sprinkle lightly with sugar.

  3. Remove turnips and fry the duck in the same butter for a few minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, melt a small lump of butter and thicken with flour.

  2. Add parsley, onion, bay leaf, gravy, and white wine to the saucepan.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the duck in the sauce to stew gently.

  2. When half cooked, add the turnips and finish cooking slowly.

  3. Skim off excess fat and serve hot.

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. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main protein and rich fat that flavours the stewing sauce.
Turnips
Hold their shape during slow cooking and add mild, slightly sweet body to the dish.
Butter
Carries the browning of the turnips and duck and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the duck and turnips.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the rich duck and gravy.

The step that matters

Skim off excess fat. Duck releases a lot of fat while it cooks. Removing the surplus before serving keeps the sauce clean-tasting and prevents a greasy texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, butter, sugar, flour, parsley, white wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, sugar, flour, parsley, white wine. 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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