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Braised Duck, with Turnips

Braised duck served with turnips and a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Braised Duck, with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Sift the sugar over the peeled turnips.

  2. Melt 6 ounces of butter in a saucepan.

  3. Fry the turnips until pale brown.

Braise the duck

  1. Add 2 ounces more butter and the chopped onion.

  2. Place the duck breast down in the pan and brown for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the duck.

  4. Stir in the baked flour, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and stock.

  5. Boil the mixture rapidly.

  6. Skim off the fat.

  7. Add the Marsala and lemon juice.

  8. Return the duck breast to the pan.

  9. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  10. Add the turnips and simmer for another 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the duck on a hot dish with turnips around it.

  2. Pour the gravy over 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.

  1. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

Turnips
Caramelised with sugar and butter, they brown on the outside and become tender in the braising liquid.
Duck
The main protein; browning first builds colour and flavour before it simmers gently until tender.
Baked flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy by absorbing liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Carries heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the turnips and onion.
Marsala wine
Adds acidity and a sweet, fortified depth to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after boiling. Rendered duck fat rises to the surface of the boiling stock; removing it before simmering keeps the gravy clean-tasting and prevents it from becoming greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, sugar, butter, flour, sauce, pepper, wine. 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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