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To Roast a Wild-duck

A roasted wild duck served with beef gravy, hot port wine, salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Roast a Wild-duck

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.

Roast

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

  2. Place the wild duck in the oven and roast for about 45 minutes, basting frequently with butter.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, pour beef gravy through the duck into the serving dish.

  2. In a separate sauce tureen, serve hot port wine.

  3. Make four cuts along the breast of the duck, sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Squeeze the juice of ½ lemon over the duck and pour the port wine over it.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beef + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Is the main protein, cooked by dry roasting in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that carries heat and promotes browning on the duck skin while basting.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury moisture and rich meaty flavour to the carved duck.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce served with the duck.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the duck.

The step that matters

Basting the duck during roasting. Wild duck is lean and can dry out in the oven. Frequent basting with butter adds fat and moisture to the surface, helping the skin brown and the meat stay tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, port wine, pepper):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, port wine, pepper. 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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