Skip to main content
Main

For Roasting a Wild Duck

Roasted wild duck served on toasted bread with beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

For Roasting a Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a clear brisk fire and a hot spit.

Roast

  1. Place the duck on the spit and roast for 15-20 minutes, adjusting time for desired doneness.

  2. Baste the duck with butter and froth it with flour.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast or fry slices of bread until golden brown and place them in a dripping pan under the duck.

  2. Serve the duck on the toasted bread with good beef gravy.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Wild duck
Forms the main dish; its fat renders during roasting and keeps the lean meat moist.
Butter
Basting fat that adds moisture and helps the skin brown as it roasts.
Flour
Dusted onto the basting fat, it helps form a crisp, golden froth on the surface.
Slices of bread
Soak up drippings beneath the duck, giving a flavourful base to serve it on.

The step that matters

Adjusting the roasting time. Wild duck is lean and dries out quickly once overdone, so timing must be judged against the desired doneness rather than fixed in advance.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes