Skip to main content
Main

Ducks En Salmis

A duck stew with consommé, ham, onion, parsley, and a sauce thickened with plain sauce, egg yolk, and cream, garnished with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ducks En Salmis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Cut the half-roasted ducks into legs, wings, and breast, placing them in one stewpan, and the backbone in another.

  2. Stew the legs and wings gently in 1 cup of consommé until nearly dry.

Make the sauce

  1. In the stewpan with the backbone, add the onion, ham, parsley, and 1 cup of consommé; bring to a boil.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of plain sauce and let it boil gently, stirring occasionally until thickened.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into the stewpan with the duck pieces; heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Place the duck in a serving dish garnished with fried bread.

  2. Stir in the egg yolk and cream into the sauce, pour it over the duck, and serve.

  3. Before serving, add chopped tarragon, chervil, and tarragon vinegar.

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. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 is gently stewed until tender and flavourful.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich texture when stirred in.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Plain sauce
Forms the base that thickens the consommé into a body-rich sauce.
Consommé
Supplies the clear, savoury liquid that cooks the duck and forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk and cream into the sauce. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot when it is added. Removing the sauce from direct heat before stirring in the yolk and cream keeps it smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, parsley, sauce, egg, cream, bread, tarragon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, sauce, egg, cream, bread, tarragon. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes