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Duck, with Carrots

A duck dish with carrot puree and espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Duck, with Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots in a small amount of water with the sugar until tender.

  2. Pass the carrots through a fine sieve, season to taste, add the butter, and reheat.

Cook the duck

  1. Cut the duck into serving pieces and place them in the hot sauce, simmering gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the carrot puree on a hot dish, arrange the duck pieces on top, pour the sauce around, 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Carrots
Cooked and sieved into a puree that gives the dish its body, sweetness and smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the carrot puree.
Sugar
Boils with the carrots to add sweetness and bring out their flavour.
Espagnole sauce
Brown sauce that coats the duck and carries the savoury depth of the dish.
Duck
Cooked pieces that provide the main protein and rich, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the duck gently in the sauce. Gentle simmering keeps the duck meat tender and moist; a hard boil toughens the proteins and can make the sauce cloudy or greasy.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, sugar, 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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