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Duck with Olives

Duck with olives is a roasted duck served with olives in a butter and stock gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Duck with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Truss the duck as round and short as possible.

  2. Rub the breast with lemon juice.

Brown and braise

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and brown the duck all over.

  2. Add stock and baste frequently.

  3. Just before serving, add pitted olives to the gravy.

  4. Remove the duck, shake olives in the gravy, and place around the duck before serving.

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 + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  2. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat, whose fat renders and flavours the gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the duck, adding richness and golden colour to the skin.
Olives
Add a salty, briny flavour that cuts through the richness of the duck fat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich duck.

The step that matters

Adding the olives just before serving. Olives held too long in the hot gravy soften, lose their texture and can taste dull. Adding them late keeps them firm and gives the gravy a fresh briny finish.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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