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Braised Duck a LA Navets

A braised duck cooked with onions, shallots, carrots, bay leaves, parsley, Nepaul pepper, and white turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Duck a LA Navets

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the duck

  1. Fry the duck in a braising pan with butter until browned.

  2. Remove the duck and stir in flour with the fat in the pan.

  3. Add stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Return the duck to the pan and garnish with onions, shallots, carrots, bay leaves, parsley, and Nepaul pepper.

  5. Braise until tender: 2 hours for a duck, 1 hour for a duckling.

  6. Strain the stock to remove vegetables.

Prepare and glaze the turnips

  1. Prepare turnips by cutting them into orange-sized shapes.

  2. Blanch turnips in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain.

  3. In a sauté pan, caramelize sugar, then add butter and turnips.

  4. Shake until turnips are browned, then add some duck stock to deglaze.

Serve

  1. Combine turnips with the duck, warm, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat and rendered fat that flavours the braise and browns first.
Flour
Stirred into the fat to form a roux that thickens the braising stock.
Stock
Liquid that braises the duck slowly, becoming the base of the sauce.
White turnips
Starchy vegetable that browns in butter and sugar, adding sweetness and caramel flavour.
Sugar
Caramelizes in the pan, giving the turnips a sweet, deep brown colour.
Onions
Aromatic vegetables that add savoury sweetness to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Caramelize sugar before adding the turnips. Sugar darkens and turns bitter if it burns, and it cools quickly when butter is added. Watch the colour closely and add the butter once the sugar is a light amber, so the turnips brown evenly instead of scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, shallot, carrot, parsley, pepper, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, shallot, carrot, parsley, pepper, turnip. 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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