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Duck and Green Peas

A stew of duck and green peas cooked in a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Duck and Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the rind from the bacon and divide it into 2‑inch square pieces.

  2. Fry the bacon pieces in butter until light brown.

  3. Dredge the bacon in flour and stir for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the broth, onion, sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.

Stew the duck

  1. Fry or roast the duck for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the duck to the stew‑pan.

  3. Stew the duck slowly for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until tender.

Cook the peas and serve

  1. Meanwhile, stew the peas with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Place the duck and peas on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the strained and thickened gravy over them.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in the gravy.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and salty flavor to the broth as it renders and browns.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy when cooked with the bacon fat and butter.
Butter
Carries flavor and browns the bacon, adding richness to the dish and the peas.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy that the duck stews in.
Peas
Provide sweet, tender vegetable body alongside the rich duck and gravy.

The step that matters

Dredge the bacon in flour and stir for 3 minutes. Cooking the flour in the bacon fat and butter for a few minutes toasts away its raw taste and lets it thicken the broth evenly; stopping early leaves a pasty, floury gravy and adding flour to cold fat causes lumps.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, clove, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, clove, pepper. 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.

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