Skip to main content
Main

Mock Duck

A stuffed beefsteak seasoned with salt and pepper, filled with bread or crackers and optional oysters, roasted for about an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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 for about 1 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; roasting browns its outside and cooks the meat through.
Bread or crackers
Absorbs meat juices and gives the stuffing a soft, moist texture.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Sewing the stuffed steak closed. A tight seal keeps the stuffing from falling out and keeps juices from leaking while the meat roasts, so the filling stays moist.

“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