Name: To Roast Wild Ducks
Ingredients: wild ducks; cayenne pepper; lemon or Seville orange; gravy; 1 shallot, finely chopped

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Roast Wild Ducks

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.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast and serve

Roast the wild ducks for about 20 minutes.
Place the ducks on a serving dish.
Make three or four cuts down the breast with a knife.
Sprinkle a little cayenne pepper and squeeze lemon or Seville orange over the ducks.
Serve hot with gravy and chopped shallot in a sauceboat.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,523 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks: Provide the main meat, which roasts to a tender, browned finish.
Lemon or seville orange: Adds acidity and bright aroma that cut through the rich duck fat.
Gravy: Adds moisture and savoury depth to the sliced duck.