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Wild Duck, Roasted

Roasted wild duck served with lemon and optional cayenne or salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Carefully pluck and draw the wild duck.

  2. Wipe out the inside.

  3. Cut off the head and neck.

  4. Scald the feet.

  5. Place the feet like a tame duck's or truss them like a fowl's.

Roast and serve

  1. Put the duck close to a sharp fire for a few minutes to keep the gravy in.

  2. Baste the duck plentifully with butter until cooked through.

  3. Froth the duck well.

  4. Serve with gravy or sauce.

  5. Cut the lemon in half. Dip one half of the lemon in salt and the other half in cayenne.

  6. Serve the lemon alongside. Score the duck's breast and squeeze both halves into the duck's breast.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Forms the main body of the dish, and its fat and juices are what the butter-basting builds on.
Butter
Basting fat that carries heat to the surface, promoting browning and keeping the meat moist.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts through the richness of the duck's fat.

The step that matters

Put the duck close to a sharp fire for a few minutes. A short blast of intense heat at the start sears the skin and seals in juices, which is why the record says to keep the gravy in. Too little heat leaves the skin pale and the juices lost.

“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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