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Dressed Ducks, or Geese Hashed

A hash of diced onion, butter, flour, and duck pieces simmered in boiling water, seasoned with pepper, salt, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dressed Ducks, or Geese Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and fry the diced onion until soft but not browned.

  2. Add boiling water to the pan to create a sauce for the hash.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour, stirring until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the duck pieces to the sauce to warm them without boiling.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and ketchup before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softened in butter to build a sweet, mild base for the sauce.
Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth sauce that clings to the duck.
Duck
Cooked meat that provides the main substance and rich flavour of the hash.

The step that matters

Add the duck without boiling. Once the duck is in the sauce, boiling can toughen cooked meat and make it dry and stringy. Gentle heat only warms it through while keeping it tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, ketchup. 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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