Name: Wild Duck with Olives
Ingredients: 1 wild duck; 2 teaspoons flour; 2 ladlefuls soup; pickled olives (as many as desired); boiling water (enough to cover olives); salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Olive and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,398 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-heptenal, which smells green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Braise the duck

In a stew-pan, brown the duck until colored.
Add 2 teaspoons of flour and continue browning.
Stir in 2 ladlefuls of soup.

Prepare and serve

Remove the kernels from the pickled olives and scald them in boiling water.
When the duck is almost cooked, add the olives to the pan.
Once done, place the duck in the center of a dish, surround it with olives, and pour the sauce over everything.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Olive + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).
Flour + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together49,477 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + olivetop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together13,452 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and pepper share little aroma chemistry, yet 49,477 recipes mention both: they likely 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 becomes tender as it cooks in the sauce.
Flour: Browns with the duck fat and thickens the soup into a sauce.
Soup: Forms the liquid base of the sauce that cooks the duck.
Pickled olives: Add a sharp, salty tang that cuts the richness of the duck.

“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.