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Duck with Turnips

A roasted duck simmered in stock with turnips, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Duck with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the duck

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Brown the duck on all sides in the melted butter.

  3. Remove the duck and add flour to the butter, cooking until brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the stock, bouquet garni, onion, salt, and pepper.

  2. Return the duck to the pan.

Prepare the turnips

  1. Combine turnips, butter, and powdered sugar in another saucepan.

  2. Brown the turnips.

  3. Strain the turnips.

  4. Add the turnips to the duck.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer for 45 minutes.

  2. Remove the onion and bouquet garni.

  3. Skim off excess grease before serving with turnips.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, which browns for flavor and cooks gently in the stock.
Flour
Cooked in the butter until brown, it thickens the stock and adds color and nutty flavor.
Turnips
Add a mildly sweet, earthy vegetable that absorbs the flavor of the braising liquid.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that gives the sauce its body and savory flavor.
Butter
Carries the browning of the duck and turnips and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the duck on all sides. Browning builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pat the bird dry and keep the pan hot, since steamed, pale skin gives a flat taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, clove, pepper, turnip, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, pepper, turnip, sugar. 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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