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Ducks with a Puree of Carrots

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ducks with a Puree of Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scrape and quarter the carrots, then boil them until very tender.

  2. Drain the carrots in a sieve, then stir them in a pan with a good amount of butter over heat.

  3. Mash the carrots until the butter begins to fry, then add ½ ladle of consomme.

  4. Once dry, add more consomme as needed, followed by 2 or 3 tablespoons of plain sauce.

  5. Season with a little coarse sea salt and a small bit of sugar.

  6. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a large dish.

  7. Return the puree to a stewpan and stir it on the fire with a wooden spoon until heated.

  8. If the puree is not strong enough, add a bit of glaize.

  9. Pour the puree into a serving dish and place the stewed ducks in the center.

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. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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