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To Boil a Duck or a Rabbit with Okioks

A boiled duck or rabbit served with a thickened onion sauce and optional alternative sauce of parsley, lettuce, gravy, butter, lemon, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Boil a Duck or a Rabbit with Okioks

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the duck

  1. Boil the duck or rabbit in a large pot of water, skimming off any scum that rises, for about 30 minutes.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Peel and slice the onions, then boil them in a mixture of milk and water for 30 minutes, skimming the liquid.

  2. Drain the onions in a sieve, chop them small, and return them to a saucepan.

  3. Add flour, cream, and butter to the chopped onions and cook over low heat until thickened.

Serve

  1. Place the boiled duck or rabbit in a serving dish and pour the onion sauce over it.

  2. For an alternative sauce, chop the large onion, parsley, and lettuce, then combine with gravy, butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  3. Cook the alternative sauce for 30 minutes, then stir in the red wine before pouring it over the duck.

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. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Duck or rabbit
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Onions
Cooked until soft and chopped, they give the sauce its body and mellow sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the onion sauce as it cooks with the butter and cream.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Milk
Softens the onions and gives the sauce a creamy, mild body.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the alternative sauce, stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling duck. Scum that rises during boiling is protein and impurities; removing it keeps the broth clear and the meat tasting clean rather than muddy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, milk, flour, cream, butter, parsley):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, milk, flour, cream, butter, parsley. 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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