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Stewed Duck

A dish of roasted duck stewed with carrots, onions, parsley, and shallots in butter and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Stewed Duck

Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Duck

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.

Prepare the duck

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

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter and fry the minced shallots until delicate.

  2. Add the duck to the stewpan with the fried shallots, carrots, green onions, and parsley.

  3. Cover the duck partially with boiling gravy and stew for 1 to 1.25 hours, turning occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve with green peas or turnips au beurre.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + parsleytop 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 and rich fat that flavours the stew as it cooks.
Shallots
Build a mild, sweet aromatic base when softened gently in butter.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Carries the shallot flavour and adds richness to the base.
Boiling gravy
Supplies the liquid that gently braises the duck and carries flavour through the stew.

The step that matters

Stewing the partly covered duck. The liquid should only partly cover the duck, and turning it lets the exposed skin and meat cook evenly. Covering it fully would boil and soften the meat rather than braising it, so the flavour and texture suffer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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