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Ducks En Salmis

A duck stew made with consomme, plain sauce, and seasoned with onion, ham, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ducks En Salmis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Cut the ducks into legs, wings, and breasts, keeping the back bone separate.

Make the salmi

  1. In one pot, stew the legs and wings in a little consomme until nearly dry.

  2. In another pot, combine the back bone, onion, ham, parsley, and a ladle of consomme.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add the plain sauce and stir gently until thickened.

  4. Strain the mixture into the pot with the duck and heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve the duck garnished with fried parsley.

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

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

  2. Onion + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ham + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which is cut into pieces and stewed until tender.
Consomme
Adds savoury liquid that concentrates as it reduces, flavouring the duck and the sauce.
Plain sauce
Thickens the strained liquid so it coats the duck pieces.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savoury depth to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Stew the legs and wings until nearly dry. Reducing the consomme slowly concentrates its flavour and lets the meat absorb it. If the pot is left too wet or cooked too hard, the sauce will taste thin or the meat may toughen.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, ham, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, ham, 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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