Name: Canard Aux Navets. — Duck with Turnips
Ingredients: 1 duck; 2 cups turnips, cut small; 2 cups good stock; ½ cup veal gravy; ½ cup cullis

Why it works: Turnip and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,343 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenol, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Canard Aux Navets. — Duck with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Stew the duck separately, à la braise.

Make the ragout

Parboil the turnips in good stock until tender.
Add veal gravy and cullis to the turnips.

Serve

Serve the ragout 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.

Turnip + vealtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,343 recipes

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

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; braising keeps the meat tender and moist.
Turnips: Form the body of the ragout and absorb flavour from the stock and gravy.
Veal gravy: Adds savoury depth and body to the ragout.
Cullis: Thickens the sauce and concentrates its flavour.

“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.