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Mock, Duck

A beefsteak stuffed with bread or crackers, optionally oysters, seasoned with salt and pepper, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and oyster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mock, Duck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Season both sides of the beefsteak with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Prepare bread or crackers with or without oysters for stuffing.

Stuff and roast

  1. Lay the stuffing on the meat and sew it up.

  2. Roast the stuffed beefsteak in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about an hour.

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. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing while it roasts.
Bread or crackers
Forms the bulk of the stuffing, absorbing juices and adding soft texture inside the meat.
Oysters
Adds a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing when used.

“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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