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Ducks with Turnips

A duck dish simmered with turnips, butter, sugar, stock, herbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ducks with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the duck and turnips

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Add a little sugar.

  3. Brown the turnips in the butter.

  4. Remove the turnips from the pan.

  5. Add the duck to the pan.

  6. Cook the duck until it is nicely browned.

  7. Remove the duck from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a roux in the same pan.

  2. Moisten the roux with stock.

  3. Return the duck to the pan.

  4. Season the duck with salt.

  5. Season the duck with pepper.

  6. Add the bunch of sweet herbs.

Stew and serve

  1. Wait until the duck is three-quarters cooked.

  2. Add the turnips.

  3. Let everything stew slowly until done.

  4. Skim the stew well.

  5. Serve the duck with turnips around the dish as a garnish.

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 + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + turniptop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat, which browns and then becomes tender as it stews.
Turnips
Browned first for colour and flavour, then soften in the stew as a vegetable accompaniment.
Butter
Carries the browning of the duck and turnips and adds rich flavour.
Stock
Moistens the roux to form the sauce and provides the liquid for stewing.
Roux (in the method)
Flour and fat cooked together to thicken the stock into a sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the duck until nicely browned. Browning creates colour and rich flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned meat gives a flat sauce, and the surface must be dry and the pan hot enough for real browning rather than steaming.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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