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Wild-ducks

Roasted wild ducks served with a sauce of port wine, gravy, onion, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Wild-ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Pluck, draw, and singe the ducks, and clean them as you would poultry.

Roast

  1. Hang the ducks over a brisk, clear fire and baste with butter.

  2. Roast for 20 to 35 minutes, depending on desired doneness.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer port wine, meat gravy, onion, cayenne, salt, nutmeg, and mace for 10 minutes.

  2. Add a bit of butter and flour to the sauce.

  3. Boil the sauce.

  4. Strain the sauce.

  5. Pour the sauce over the ducks.

  6. Alternatively, mix the drippings with boiling water.

  7. Add pepper and salt to the mixture.

  8. Strain the mixture into the dish.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Wild ducks
The main protein, which the roasting cooks through while basting keeps the skin moist and browned.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, promoting browning and a rich flavour on the skin.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it simmers and reduces.
Meat gravy
Provides savoury body and liquid as the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the ducks.

The step that matters

Roast for the stated time. Roasting for too long dries out the lean meat of wild duck, while too little leaves it underdone. Timing to the desired doneness keeps the meat juicy and safely cooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, port wine, meat, onion, pepper, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine, meat, onion, pepper, nutmeg, flour. 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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