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Duck with Olives

A duck served with olives in a lemon and cayenne sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Duck with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the duck by poaching it (see No. 10).

  2. Remove the pits from the olives while keeping their shape.

  3. Blanch the olives in boiling water to reduce saltiness.

Make the sauce

  1. If olives are not too briny, place them in a good Spanish sauce.

  2. Add the juice of one lemon and a pinch of cayenne to the sauce.

  3. Serve the sauce with the duck.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Duck
Provides the main meat; poaching it first makes it tender before serving.
Olives
Add salty, briny flavour and a firm texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Blanch the olives in boiling water. Brief boiling draws out some of the brine, so the olives do not make the sauce too salty. Skipping it or boiling too long can soften the olives and dull their shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, pepper, sauce):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, sauce. 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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