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Roast Ducklings

Roast ducklings with sage and onion stuffing, served with gravy from necks, gizzards, and livers, and side vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and liver work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 229 recipes. Both carry 1,8-cineol, which smells eucalyptus, camphor. The science ↓

Roast Ducklings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the ducklings with sage and onion stuffing, or omit if preferred.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the ducklings over a brisk, clear fire.

  2. Baste the ducklings well until fully cooked.

Make the gravy

  1. Prepare gravy by stewing the necks, gizzards, and livers with onions.

Serve

  1. Serve the ducklings with the gravy poured around them, not over.

  2. Accompany with green peas, stewed endive, young turnips tossed in butter, and any salad.

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 + livertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Ducklings
Provide the main meat, which cooks through over direct heat and bastes to a browned, moist finish.
Onions
Add sweetness and savour to the gravy as they stew with the giblets.
Necks, gizzards, and livers
Build a rich, concentrated flavour base for the gravy when stewed.

The step that matters

Baste the ducklings well until fully cooked. Duck skin and fat need regular basting so the surface browns and stays moist while the fat renders. Stopping early leaves the meat underdone or the skin flabby.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, liver):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, liver. 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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