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Duck with Turnips

A stew of duck served with a ragout of turnips, veal gravy, and cullis, finished with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 652 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Duck with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the turnips into small pieces and parboil them in good stock.

  2. Stew the duck separately until half done.

Make the ragout

  1. Prepare the ragout by combining the parboiled turnips, veal gravy, and cullis.

Serve

  1. Once the duck is cooked, serve the ragout over the duck and drizzle with vinegar.

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. Turnip + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turnip + vealtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Vinegar + vealtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together948 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Turnips
Add body and a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour to the ragout.
Veal gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the ragout sauce.
Cullis
Thickens the ragout and concentrates its flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich duck and gravy.

The step that matters

Stew the duck until half done. Stopping at the halfway point leaves room for the duck to finish cooking later with the ragout. Cooking it fully at this stage would make it dry and stringy when reheated and served.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, veal):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, veal. 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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