Why it works: Bread and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,445 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Duck, Wild, Hashed
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the remains of the duck into neat joints.
Place the joints in a stewpan with all the ingredients.
Heat and serve
Heat gradually by the side of the fire, stirring occasionally.
When on the point of boiling, serve and garnish with toasted bread snippets.
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.
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Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,445 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cold roast wild duck
- Provides the main meat, whose cut joints make up the body of the hash.
- Brown gravy
- Supplies the moisture and savoury depth that coats the duck pieces.
- Bread crumbs
- Absorb some of the liquid and lightly thicken the sauce.
- Claret
- Adds acidity and wine flavour that cut through the rich duck and gravy.
- Lemon juice or seville orange juice
- Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.
The step that matters
Heating gradually and stopping at the point of boiling. Gentle, gradual heat keeps the cooked duck tender and prevents the proteins from tightening and toughening. A hard boil can also make the thickened sauce separate or scorch on the base of the pan, so the hash should be served as soon as it nears boiling.
“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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