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Modern Cookery

A roasted duck stewed with green peas, turnips, green onions, parsley, carrots, shallots, butter, and beef stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast

  1. Truss the duck firmly and roast it halfway in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the duck with a small bunch of green onions, parsley, and young carrots.

  2. Stew the duck for 1 to 1.25 hours, turning occasionally.

  3. For flavor, add minced shallots fried in butter and cover with boiling gravy.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Peas + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Butter
Fat used to fry the shallots, carrying their flavor into the dish.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma when fried in butter.
Beef stock
Liquid base that the duck stews in, adding savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the duck for 1 to 1.25 hours. Stewing at too high a heat or boiling vigorously can toughen the meat. A gentle simmer with occasional turning lets the connective tissue soften slowly and keeps the duck moist.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, carrot, shallot, butter, beef):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, carrot, shallot, butter, beef. 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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