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To Eoast Wild Ducks

Roasted wild ducks basted with butter, served with soaked bread and port wine or claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Eoast Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak a bit of soft bread in port wine or claret.

  2. Flour the ducks well and place them near a clear, brisk fire.

Roast

  1. Baste the ducks constantly with butter.

  2. Rotate the spit rapidly if possible.

  3. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes for general preference, or longer for well-done.

  4. For teal, roast for 10 to 15 minutes for a fashionable serving, or 20 minutes for well-done.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Bread + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which is cooked by direct radiant heat from the fire.
Soft bread
Soaked in port or claret, it adds moisture and a soft, absorbent base for the sauce.
Port wine or claret
Adds sweetness and acidity, flavouring the bread and the drippings.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the surface moist and promotes gentle browning as it is basted.

The step that matters

Basting the ducks constantly with butter. Lean wild birds dry out quickly over a hot fire. Frequent basting coats the surface in fat, keeping the meat moist and helping the skin brown evenly.

“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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