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Duck, with Cabbage

A braised duck served with cabbage, ham, sausages, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Duck, with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in salted water for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain and press the cabbage.

Braise the duck

  1. In a stewpan, add fat bacon to cover the bottom and brown the trussed duck.

  2. Add the lean ham and some cabbage on top.

  3. Place the duck with more cabbage over it and the sausages around.

  4. Season with sweet herbs, cloves, peppercorns, onion, carrot, and turnip if available.

  5. Moisten with a little stock or gravy.

  6. Cover the pot.

  7. Cook until done.

  8. Turn the sausages as needed.

Serve

  1. Slice the ham.

  2. Arrange the ham and sausages around the duck.

  3. Place the cabbage underneath.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 as it cooks slowly in the covered pot.
Cabbage
Absorbs the rendered fat and juices from the duck, adding moisture and a mild sweetness.
Fat bacon
Fat for browning the duck and adds savoury richness to the braising liquid.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savoury meat flavour to the cabbage and the pot.
Sausages
Add fat and seasoned meat flavour as they cook in the covered pot.

The step that matters

Browning the trussed duck in the bacon fat. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, and the fat must be hot enough to brown the skin without steaming it. Pale browning leaves the finished dish flat-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, ham, pepper, clove, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, ham, pepper, clove, carrot, turnip. 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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