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Ducks with Green Peas À LA Francaise

A roasted duck served with green peas or turnips au beurre, cooked with carrots, onions, parsley, shallots, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ducks with Green Peas À LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the duck

  1. Truss the duck firmly and roast it halfway in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter and fry the minced shallots until delicate.

  2. Add the duck to the stewpan with the fried shallots, carrots, green onions, and parsley.

  3. Cover the duck partially with boiling gravy and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Stew for 1 to 1.25 hours until tender.

  5. Serve the duck in a circle with green peas or turnips au beurre heaped in the center.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together173 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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 through slow stewing in liquid.
Shallots
Softened in butter, they add a mild, sweet aromatic base to the stew.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the stewing liquid as they soften.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and flavour when frying the shallots.
Beef stock
Forms the braising liquid, adding savoury depth and moisture to the duck.

The step that matters

Stew for 1 to 1.25 hours until tender. Stewing needs a gentle simmer under partial cover. Too much heat toughens the meat and dries the surface, while too little time leaves connective tissue firm and the duck chewy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, parsley, shallot, butter, pepper, beef):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, parsley, shallot, butter, pepper, beef. 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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