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Roast Duck

Roast duck with sage and onion stuffing, served with a gravy made from beef, onion, apple, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Roast Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Stuff the duck with the sage and onion stuffing and truss it nicely.

Make the gravy

  1. Simmer the giblets in water with the beef, sliced onion, apple, pepper, and salt for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the gravy and thicken it with flour.

  3. Color the gravy if necessary and add a glass of port wine if desired.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the duck for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on its size.

  2. Pour a little gravy around the duck and serve the remainder in a boat.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the rich meat and fat that give the roast its main flavor and texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by swelling with liquid as it heats, giving it body.
Gravy beef
Adds meaty savory depth to the stock that the gravy is built on.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the simmered gravy stock.
Apple
Adds a mild sweetness and acidity to the simmered gravy stock.

The step that matters

Color the gravy if necessary. Gravy thickened with flour can look pale or greyish. Adjusting its color carefully with browning or port keeps it appealing without making it bitter or too thick.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, onion, flour, beef, pepper. 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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