Name: To Stew an Old Duck with Cabbage
Ingredients: 1 large fat duck; ½ head of cabbage, cut; 2 tablespoons herbs (mixed); 1 onion, chopped; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; Gravy (prepared with seasonings)

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Stew an Old Duck with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Stew the cut cabbage in a pot with seasonings.
Parroast the duck until browned.

Stew and serve

Stew the duck in well-seasoned gravy with herbs, onion, pepper, and salt.
Thicken the gravy.
Serve the duck on top of the cabbage with the sauce in the dish.

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.

Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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, with rich fat that flavours the stew as it cooks.
Cabbage: Forms the bed of vegetable under the duck, adding bulk and a mild sweetness when stewed.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the stewing liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Parroast the duck until browned. Browning the skin renders some fat and builds roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stewing alone would leave the duck pale and less savoury.

Swap the onion

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

Cauliflowerfits better
Broccolifits better
Turnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, 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.

Red Cabbage65 recipes

Stewed Cabbage58 recipes

Baked Cabbage51 recipes

Cabbage Dressing19 recipes

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To Stew an Old Duck with Cabbage