Skip to main content
Main

Duck and Red Cabbage

A stew of duck and shredded red cabbage cooked slowly with butter, stock, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Duck and Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash and drain the cabbage, then shred it finely.

  2. Heat the butter in a stewpan, add the cabbage, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover closely and cook gently for 1 hour, adding gravy or stock as needed to prevent burning.

Cook the duck

  1. Divide the ducks into neat joints and place them in a stewpan with just enough hot gravy or stock to barely cover them.

  2. Cover with a close-fitting lid and allow to cook just below simmering point for nearly 1 hour.

Serve

  1. When ready, add the vinegar to the cabbage, turn it onto a hot dish, and arrange the duck neatly on top.

  2. Serve with additional gravy, either poured around or handed separately.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Becomes tender through long gentle cooking and forms the bed of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the cabbage cooks in the pan.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, earthy flavour of red cabbage.
Cold ducks
Provide the main meat, which is gently reheated in hot gravy or stock.

The step that matters

Cooking the cabbage gently with added liquid. Red cabbage can scorch on the bottom of the pan if it dries out over a long cook. Keeping the heat low and adding gravy or stock as needed prevents burning and keeps the cabbage moist and tender.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagethe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, 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

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes