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Duck Pie

A savory pie made with roasted duck, gravy, orange juice, olives, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,456 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Duck Pie

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.

Prepare the ducks

  1. Scald the ducks.

  2. Draw the ducks.

  3. Remove heads, necks, feet, and pinions.

  4. Boil the removed parts with the gizzards, anchovy, and seasoning to make ½ cup of strong gravy.

  5. Remove fat from the ducks.

  6. Season the ducks with pepper.

  7. Rub the ducks with butter.

Roast and cool

  1. Roast the ducks for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Let the ducks cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the ducks up and place them in a dish with the livers.

  2. Add the strained gravy, orange juice, and olives.

  3. Cover the mixture with pie crust.

  4. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Orange + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Anchovy + olivetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together880 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the meat that forms the body of the pie filling.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the gravy made from the boiled duck parts.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the duck skin brown and the meat stay moist.
Strong gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour to the filling under the crust.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich duck and gravy.
Stoned olives
Add salty, briny flavour that balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C). Roasting renders fat and browns the skin, which builds flavour. Stopping at the set time keeps the meat from drying out before it bakes again under the crust.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, pepper, butter, olive):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, pepper, butter, olive. 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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