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Ducks with Orange Sauce

A duck cooked with butter, lemon, and orange, served with orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ducks with Orange Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the duck carefully without damaging the skin.

  2. Blanch the feet, trim the small points, and truss them.

  3. Fill the duck with a mixture of butter, lemon juice, and salt.

  4. Truss the duck into a good shape.

Braise

  1. Cover a stewpan with lard and place the duck inside.

  2. Top with slices of lemon and more lard.

  3. Add the carrot, clove-stuck onion, parsley, young onions, consomme, and white wine.

  4. Cover with a round of paper and boil for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. When done, drain, unlace, and serve with orange sauce.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Main protein; its fat renders during cooking, keeping the meat moist and flavourful.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the inside moist and tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich duck fat and balances the flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid that flavours the duck.
Consomme or reduced aspic
Provides savoury liquid and body that keeps the duck moist during cooking.
Bitter oranges
Supply acidity and aroma for the sauce that cuts through the rich duck.

The step that matters

Prepare the duck without damaging the skin. The intact skin holds the butter, lemon and salt filling inside and keeps the fat and juices from escaping. A torn skin lets the flavouring leak out and the meat dry out during the long cooking.

Swap the bitter orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, carrot, onion, clove, parsley, white wine):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, carrot, onion, clove, 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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