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To Stew a Wild Duck

A stew made with wild duck, sage, sweet herbs, stock, port wine, lemon juice, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Stew a Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Make the herb stew

  1. In a pot, combine chopped sage, sweet herbs, stock, port wine, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew the herb mixture for 10 minutes.

Cook the duck

  1. Meanwhile, roast the duck in a Dutch oven until slightly more than half-cooked.

  2. Add the duck and its gravy to the herb stew, ensuring the gravy is cooled to remove excess fat.

  3. Simmer gently until the duck is fully cooked.

  4. Optionally, cut the duck into joints before adding to the stew.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Sage + port winetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Main protein that the stew is built around, becoming tender as it simmers.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the stew's savoury base.
Good stock
Provides the liquid and body that carries the herbs and duck.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the stew.
Sage
Contributes an aromatic, earthy herb flavour.

The step that matters

Cool the gravy before adding it to the stew. Fat from the roasted duck rises and separates as the gravy cools, so it can be lifted off. Removing it keeps the stew from tasting greasy and gives a cleaner, more balanced broth.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, lemon, 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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