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Fillets of Cercelles, Orange-sauce

Fillets of small ducks roasted with oil, seasoned with sea salt, served with a citrusy orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fillets of Cercelles, Orange-sauce

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.

Roast the duck

  1. Draw and truss the cercelles, then skewer them and roast at 400°F (200°C) for 12-14 minutes, basting with oil.

  2. Sprinkle the fillets with coarse sea salt.

  3. Remove the fillets from the heat.

  4. Slip the fillets out of the skewer and place them in a flat pan with a little glaze.

  5. Heat the fillets over medium heat for 1 minute to dry up moisture.

  6. Arrange the fillets in a circle on a serving dish.

Make the orange sauce

  1. Boil the orange zest in water.

  2. Drain the zest.

  3. In a small pan, combine the zest with the reduced brown sauce.

  4. Stir in the orange juice.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Orange + saucetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together723 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cercelles (small ducks)
Provide the meat that is roasted and served as fillets.
Reduced brown sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and body.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fruity sweetness that balances the rich duck.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts richness.
Orange zest
Adds aromatic citrus oils to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the fillets to dry up moisture. Surface moisture on the fillets prevents good browning and can dilute the glaze, so the fillets should be dried briefly over heat before serving.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, lemon. 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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