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Duck, with Cabbage

A duck cooked with boiled cabbage, ham, sausages, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and ham work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 186 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Duck, with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in salted water for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain the boiled cabbage and press it.

Braise the duck

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with fat bacon.

  2. Brown the trussed duck.

  3. Place a piece of lean ham under the duck.

  4. Layer the boiled cabbage on top of the duck.

  5. Surround the duck with sausages.

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

  7. Moisten the dish with stock or gravy.

  8. Cover the stewpan.

  9. Cook until done, turning the sausages as needed.

  10. Arrange ham strips around the duck and cabbage underneath.

  11. Serve.

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. Cabbage + hamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together186 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Is the main protein, becoming tender and juicy as it braises slowly with moisture.
Cabbage
Forms a layer that absorbs flavour from the braising liquid and fat while softening.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps brown the base of the stewpan.
Lean ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour to the duck and cabbage during cooking.
Sausages
Add savoury richness and fat that flavours the surrounding braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cover the stewpan and cook until done. Covering traps steam so the duck cooks in moist heat and stays tender. Lifting the lid often lets moisture escape, so the meat can dry out before the cabbage and duck are fully cooked.

“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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