Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Wild Duck, Baked
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Dry-pick the duck and leave the head on.
Season the inside of the bird with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Place the duck on its back in a baking pan without adding water.
Preheat the oven to a hot temperature, testing with your hand.
Bake
Baste the duck frequently with butter or bacon.
Bake for about 30 minutes or until the duck is plump and the flesh is red.
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.
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Wild duck
- Provides the main meat, which cooks through and turns red-fleshed in the oven.
- Butter or bacon
- Adds fat that keeps the surface moist and helps it brown as it bastes.
The step that matters
Basting the duck frequently. Wild duck is lean, so its surface can dry out in the oven. Regular basting with fat keeps the skin moist and encourages even browning.
“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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