Skip to main content
Main

Wild Duck, Roast

A roasted wild duck stuffed with bread crumbs soaked in port, seasoned with salt, cayenne, and served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Wild Duck, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Stuff the duck with bread crumbs soaked in port or claret.

  2. Truss the duck securely.

  3. Rub the duck with the liver.

  4. Dust the duck with flour.

Roast

  1. Place the duck over a clear, brisk fire.

  2. Baste the duck constantly.

  3. Ensure the duck turns rapidly on the spit.

  4. Roast for 15 to 25 minutes until preferred doneness.

Serve

  1. Serve the duck on a dish without gravy, placing an uncut lemon on each side.

  2. Cut the lemons in half.

  3. Sprinkle salt on one side of the lemons. Sprinkle cayenne on the other side of the lemons.

  4. Score the breast of the duck deeply.

  5. Squeeze the lemons over the breast.

  6. Pour a glass of port on top.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which is cooked through by roasting over direct heat.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the port or claret inside the bird, adding moisture to the stuffing.
Port or claret
Adds moisture and sweetness, and its flavour carries into the meat.
Flour
Dusted on the skin, it helps the surface brown and crisp during roasting.
Lemons
Add acidity and fresh aroma that cut through the rich duck fat.

The step that matters

Baste the duck constantly. Basting keeps the surface moist so it does not dry out, and spreading liquid over the skin promotes even browning while the bird turns over the fire.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, pepper):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes