Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Duck with Turnips

A stew of duck, turnips, and espagnole sauce with bacon and madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Duck with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown the duck

  1. Ensure the duck is singed, drawn, and trussed.

  2. In a large stewpan, add the duck, butter, and bacon (cut into pieces).

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then fry slowly until golden.

  4. Drain off the fat and reserve it for frying the turnips.

Stew the duck

  1. Add the sauce, bouquet garni, stock, and madeira. Bring to a boil, remove scum, cover, and cook gently for 30 to 45 minutes.

Prepare and add the turnips

  1. Peel and quarter the turnips, then trim them neatly.

  2. In a sauté pan, add the turnips and remaining butter, season with salt and sugar, and fry until slightly brown.

  3. Drain the turnips and add them to the duck. Cook for an additional 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the duck, untruss it, and place it in the center of a hot dish, surrounding it with turnips.

  2. Strain the sauce, skim off fat, and reduce it. Pour some sauce over the duck and serve the rest separately.

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. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, which becomes tender through slow stewing in the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich, thick braising liquid that flavours and moistens the duck.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it reduces during stewing.
Butter
Carries browning and richness when frying the duck and turnips.
Turnips
Caramelise lightly in fat, adding sweetness that balances the rich sauce.
Bacon
Renders fat and savoury flavour into the pan to start the duck.

The step that matters

Frying the duck slowly until golden. Slow frying renders fat from the skin and builds browned flavour; fast heat can scorch the pan and leave the fat unrendered, which affects the final sauce.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, sugar, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Turnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes