Skip to main content

Roast Duck

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Hang the duck for 1-2 days before dressing.

  2. Stuff the duck with sage and onion stuffing.

  3. If cooking two ducks, leave one unstuffed.

  4. Baste the duck well during cooking.

  5. A few minutes before serving, dredge the duck with flour to make it froth and look plump.

  6. Pour good brown gravy around the duck, not over it.

  7. Serve with green peas.

  8. For a variation, stuff with chopped sour apples and well-steeped, stoned prunes seasoned with salt and pepper.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, onion, flour, peas, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, onion, flour, peas, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More roasted duck recipes

with Stuffing 4with Head 3 See all 113 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes