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To Stew Ducks with Green Peas

A stew of ducks cooked with gravy, mint, sage, onion, and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and peas 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 ↓

To Stew Ducks with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Half roast the ducks.

Stew

  1. Place ducks in a stewpan with gravy, mint, sage, and onion.

  2. Cover and stew for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil green peas until tender.

  2. Thicken the gravy, then add the peas.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

  4. Serve the ducks with gravy and peas poured over them.

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. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Mint + sagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together138 recipes

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

  4. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews in the gravy.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid that moistens the duck and forms the sauce.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft texture to the finished sauce.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy, then add the peas. Thickening before adding the peas lets the sauce coat them evenly. Adding peas to a thin, boiling liquid can make them break down or leave the sauce watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mint, sage, peas, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mint, sage, peas, 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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