Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Ducks

Roast ducks with apple sauce, gravy, and bread crumbs, seasoned with sage, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Pick, draw, and singe the ducks well.

  2. Remove the heads and dip the feet in boiling water to remove the outer yellow skin.

  3. Truss the ducks neatly, turning the feet flat upon the back.

  4. Stuff the ducks as you would a goose.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the ducks for about 1 hour.

  2. Serve with apple sauce and gravy.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, and their fat renders out during roasting to baste the bird.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk to the stuffing and soak up fat and juices from the duck.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown during cooking.
Sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma that complements the rich duck.
Apple sauce
Its acidity and sweetness cut through the rich, fatty duck meat.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to each serving of the meat.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks for about 1 hour. Duck has a thick layer of fat under the skin. Enough oven time lets that fat render out so the skin crisps and the meat cooks through without becoming greasy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, pepper, bread, sage, onion):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, bread, sage, onion. 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.

More roast duck recipes

Olive Sauce for 3with Apples 3 See all 98 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes