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To Stew Duck

A stew of duck quarters cooked with butter, gravy, port wine, onions, herbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Winter savory and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 455 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Stew Duck

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the duck quarters in butter until light brown.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with gravy, port wine, whole onions, black pepper, salt, parsley, sage, winter savory, and sweet marjoram.

  3. Cover the pan and stew until the duck is tender.

  4. Remove the herbs and pepper, then skim the sauce.

  5. If the sauce is not thick enough, mix 2 tablespoons of it with flour and stir into the saucepan.

  6. Boil the sauce and garnish the dish with the whole onions.

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. Winter savory + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  3. Sage + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together221 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together863 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Fat that browns the duck quarters, adding colour and savoury flavour.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries flavour into the duck.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when it is not thick enough after stewing.

The step that matters

Stew until the duck is tender. Duck is a fatty, muscular meat that needs long, gentle simmering in liquid so connective tissue breaks down. Cooking it too hard or too briefly leaves it tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, port wine, pepper, parsley, sage, winter savory, marjoram):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine, pepper, parsley, sage, winter savory, marjoram. 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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