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Salmis of Wild Duck

A stew of roasted wild duck simmered with red wine, shallots, salt, pepper, and butter, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmis of Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Roast the wild duck over a brisk fire for about 25 minutes to retain its juices.

  2. Let the duck cool, then cut it into small joints: fillets, two legs, and the breast and back into two pieces.

  3. Place the duck pieces in a stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, combine the trimmings with ½ pint of red wine and 4 chopped shallots.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then simmer until the shallots are soft.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sauce to the duck in the stewpan, and warm gently without boiling.

  2. Serve garnished with chopped parsley.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Red wine + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which is roasted first and then cut into joints for the stew.
Red wine
Forms the base of the sauce, adding acidity and depth as it simmers with the shallots.
Shallots
Soften during simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat element to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Warm the stew without boiling. Once the sauce is added, boiling can toughen the duck meat and make the sauce separate or turn stringy, so the heat should stay gentle.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, pepper, butter, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, pepper, butter, parsley. 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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