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Duck, Stewed with Green Peas

A stewed duck dish with green peas, mint, brown sauce, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Duck, Stewed with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the peas with the mint and sugar, then drain well.

  2. Divide the duck into neat pieces and place them in the hot brown sauce.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the peas, season to taste, and simmer gently for 45 to 60 minutes.

  2. Before serving, add a few drops of lemon juice.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 as it gently stews in the sauce.
Brown sauce
Supplies moisture and a rich, savory body that coats the duck and peas.
Peas
Add a soft, sweet texture and bright green color to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 45 to 60 minutes. A gentle simmer lets the duck soften slowly and stay moist. Boiling toughens the meat, and it can also break down the peas and cloud the sauce.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mint, sugar, lemon):

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mint, sugar, lemon. 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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