Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Duck

A whole duck boiled after salting, served with onion, celery, or oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the duck and let it sit for two days.

  2. Wrap the duck in a well-floured cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the duck slowly for about 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with onion sauce, celery sauce, or oyster sauce.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sauce + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main protein and meat that the whole dish is built around.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the duck deeply during the two-day rest, drawing out moisture and flavouring the meat.
Flour
Forms a coating on the cloth that helps keep the duck's surface contained during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the duck slowly. Gentle simmering cooks the meat through while keeping it tender; a rapid boil toughens protein fibres and can break the cloth wrapping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sauce, celery, oyster):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sauce, celery, oyster. 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

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes