Skip to main content
Main

Wild Duck Salmi

A savory sauce made from cold roast wild duck remains, stock, wine, butter, flour, citrus, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Wild Duck Salmi

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  4. Gradually add the stock, stirring constantly until thickened.

Season and finish

  1. Add the orange juice, lemon juice, orange strips, thyme, bay leaf, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes, then add the duck remains.

  3. Heat through and serve.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Orange + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast wild duck remains
Provides the meat and flavour that the sauce is built around.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour when melted with the onion.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and adds savoury depth from the game bones.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Stir the stock into the flour mixture gradually. Adding stock slowly while stirring constantly lets the flour disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, properly thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, butter, flour, orange, lemon, thyme, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, butter, flour, orange, lemon, thyme, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes