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To Roast Ducks

Roasted ducks served with apple sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Pick the ducks well.

  2. Draw the ducks.

  3. Singe the ducks well.

  4. Remove the heads.

  5. Dip the feet in boiling water to remove the outer yellow skin.

  6. Truss the ducks neatly, turning the feet flat upon the back.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the ducks as you would a goose.

  2. Roast the ducks for about 1 hour.

  3. Serve with apple sauce and gravy.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 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

Ducks
Provide the main meat, whose fat renders during roasting to crisp the skin.
Bread crumbs
Bind the stuffing and soak up rendered fat and juices for a moist filling.
Onions
Add moisture and sweetness as they soften and mellow in the stuffing.
Apple sauce
Adds acidity and sweetness that cut through the rich duck fat.

The step that matters

Singe the ducks well. Singeing burns off loose feathers and fine down so the skin is smooth and can crisp evenly in the oven. Missed spots leave stubby feathers and uneven skin.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, pepper, bread, sage, onion):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, bread, sage, onion. 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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