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Duck, with Cabbage

A stew of duck, cabbage, bacon, ham, sausages, and vegetables simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Duck, with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cabbage in salted water for 5 minutes, then drain and press it.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, cover the bottom with fat bacon and brown the trussed duck.

  2. Place a piece of lean ham under the duck, add cabbage on top, and surround with sausages.

  3. Add sweet herbs, cloves, peppercorns, onion, carrot, and turnip if available.

  4. Moisten with stock or gravy, cover, and cook until done, turning the sausages as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve with ham strips and sausages around the duck, placing the cabbage underneath.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Forms the main body of the dish and provides rich flavour as it cooks.
Cabbage
Absorbs the cooking juices and fat, becoming tender and savoury.
Fat bacon
Adds fat for browning the duck and flavours the braising liquid.
Lean ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour to the cabbage and the braising liquid.
Sausages
Add savoury flavour and fat that enriches the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Moisten with stock or gravy, cover, and cook until done. Covering with a modest amount of liquid and cooking gently lets the duck and cabbage become tender through slow moist heat. Too much heat or too little liquid can dry the duck or scorch the vegetables.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, ham, onion, carrot, turnip):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, ham, onion, carrot, turnip. 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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