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Wild Duck with Olives

A stew of wild duck simmered with olives, flour, soup, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the duck

  1. Brown the duck in a stew pan.

  2. Add flour and continue browning.

  3. Stir in soup.

Add the olives

  1. Remove the kernels from the olives and scald them in boiling water.

  2. When the duck is almost cooked, add the olives.

Serve

  1. Place the duck in the center of a dish.

  2. Serve the olives around it.

  3. Pour the sauce over all.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
The main protein, providing the meat and most of the dish's rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and, once browned, adds a nutty colour and flavour.
Soup
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that carries the flavour of the dish.
Pickled olives
Adds a salty, sour note that cuts the richness of the duck.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Add flour and continue browning.. Cooking flour in the hot fat develops a nutty colour and removes the raw starch taste. Stirring keeps it smooth and stops it from burning or clumping in the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, olive, 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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