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Wild Duck

Roasted wild duck served with brown gravy, lemon slices, and a port wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and port wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,499 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the duck

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the wild duck until done before a clear roasting fire, basting it often with butter.

Make the chasseur sauce and serve

  1. Serve the duck with rich brown gravy and garnish with slices of lemon.

  2. For wild duck a la chasseur, prepare a mixture of port wine, sauce, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne in a deep dish.

  3. Carve the duck and place the joints and slices into the mixture, then serve to guests.

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. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Port wine + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which browns and firms as it roasts.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture while basting and helps the skin brown.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the chasseur mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the chasseur mixture.

The step that matters

Roast the duck until done, basting often. Wild duck is lean and dries out quickly when overcooked. Frequent basting with butter adds fat and moisture to the surface, and the dry heat of the fire browns the skin.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, port wine, sauce):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine, sauce. 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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