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Stewed Duck

A whole duck stewed with green peas or turnips au beurre, green onions, parsley, young carrots, eschalots, butter, beef stock, Espagnole sauce, and boiling gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Stewed Duck

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Duck

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.

Roast

  1. Truss the duck firmly and roast it halfway in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Stew

  1. Place the duck in a stewpan after removing it from the spit.

  2. Add a small bunch of green onions, parsley, and young carrots to the stewpan.

  3. Alternatively, use minced eschalots fried in butter for flavor.

  4. Cover the duck partially with boiling gravy and turn it occasionally.

  5. Stew for 1 to 1.25 hours until cooked through.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Beef stock
Adds savory liquid that flavours the duck and forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when used to fry the eschalots.

The step that matters

Stew for 1 to 1.25 hours until cooked through. Duck needs long, gentle moist heat to turn tender. Turning it occasionally while partly covered in gravy helps it cook evenly and keeps the surface from drying out.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, carrot, butter, beef):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, carrot, butter, beef. 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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