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Ducks D LA Braise

A braised duck dish cooked with bacon, ham, veal, vegetables, herbs, and a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Dress, singe, and lard the ducks with bacon and herbs.

  2. In a stewpan, layer slices of bacon, ham, and veal or beef.

  3. Place the ducks breast down, cover with more slices, and add chopped vegetables and spices.

Braise

  1. Cover and simmer over low heat until the breasts are light brown.

  2. Add water, cover, and simmer until cooked through.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Chop parsley, onion, anchovies, gherkins, and capers; combine with duck liquor, browning, and lemon juice in a stewpan.

  2. Boil the sauce, trim the bacon even with the duck breasts, and place the ducks on a dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over the ducks and serve hot.

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.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mace + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,916 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle braising.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the duck as it cooks.
Ham
Contributes salty, savoury depth to the braising liquor and the sauce.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and umami to the sauce without tasting distinctly fishy.
Capers
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the duck and sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat until the breasts are light brown. Low, gentle heat lets connective tissue soften slowly and the breasts colour without drying out. Rapid boiling would toughen the meat and make the braising liquor cloudy and greasy.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, clove):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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