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Duck, Hashed

A savory dish of roast duck pieces simmered in a sauce of stock, butter, flour, onion, orange, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,402 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Duck, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Divide the duck into serving pieces.

  2. Finely chop the onion.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onion in the butter.

  2. Add the flour.

  3. Stir over heat until brown.

  4. Pour in the stock.

  5. Stir until it boils.

  6. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Finish and simmer

  1. Cut the orange rind into thin strips.

  2. Add them with the orange juice, wine, and duck to the sauce.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

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. Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + oniontop 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

Cold roast duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, adding richness and flavor to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with browning, giving it body and a deeper color.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavors.
Claret
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.
Orange
Contributes bright citrus aroma and a touch of acidity from rind and juice.

The step that matters

Stir the flour until brown. Cooking the flour in the butter until it browns develops nutty flavor and color, and removes raw starch taste. Stopping too early leaves the sauce pale and floury, while burning gives bitterness.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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