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To Boil Ducks

A dish of boiled ducks served with onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Boil Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the ducks, then soak them in warm water for a few minutes.

Soak in milk

  1. Place ducks in an earthen pan and pour boiling milk over them.

  2. Let them sit for 2-3 hours.

  3. Remove ducks from milk and dredge them well with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Submerge ducks in cold water and cover them.

  2. Boil ducks slowly for about 20 minutes.

  3. Serve ducks smothered with onion sauce.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms a dry coating on the duck that helps it brown and hold onto the sauce.
Milk
Its proteins and sugars soften the duck and add a mild, rich flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, pepper, sauce. 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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