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Mr. COOKe’s Forcemeat for Ducks or Geese

A savory forcemeat mixture of onions, bread crumbs, butter, sage, pepper, and salt, used to stuff ducks or geese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Mr. COOKe’s Forcemeat for Ducks or Geese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the onions for 10 to 15 minutes, then press out the water and chop them finely.

  2. Mix the chopped onions with bread crumbs, butter, sage, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and finish

  1. Stuff the mixture into the body of the duck or goose.

  2. Optionally, add boiled and shredded liver and bind with egg yolks.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Add moisture and sweetness, softening into the stuffing once boiled and pressed dry.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and onion juices, giving the stuffing a soft, cohesive body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the sage and pepper flavor through the stuffing.
Sage
Provides the herbal, aromatic flavor that characterizes the stuffing.

The step that matters

Pressing the onions dry. Boiled onions hold a lot of water. If they are not pressed well, the excess moisture dilutes the stuffing and makes it soggy as it cooks inside the bird.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sage, 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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