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Duckling , Roast

A roasted duckling seasoned with lemon, cayenne pepper, sea salt, and boiled port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Duckling , Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the duckling.

  2. Score the breast lengthwise.

  3. Cut the lemon in half; sprinkle cayenne pepper on one half and coarse sea salt on the other.

  4. Rub the two halves together and squeeze the juice over the duck.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the duckling for 25 minutes.

  2. Pour boiled port wine over the duck as a sauce.

  3. Repeat with a hot spoon and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Duckling
Provides the main meat, with its fat rendering during roasting to crisp the skin.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fresh aroma that cut through the richness of the duck.
Boiled port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce poured over the duck.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Red currantfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, port wine. 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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