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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck is a roasted duck seasoned with salt, pepper, and fat salt pork, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Roast Wild Duck

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Dress and clean the wild duck, then truss it like a goose.

  2. Place a rack in a dripping pan and sprinkle it with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover the duck's breast with the slices of fat salt pork.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes, basting every 5 minutes with the fat in the pan.

  2. Remove the string and skewers before serving.

  3. Serve with currant jelly and optionally stuff with apple or onions before roasting.

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. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat salt pork
Lays fat over the breast, melting to baste the lean meat and keep it moist.
Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which is roasted whole and trussed to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Basting every 5 minutes in a very hot oven. Wild duck is lean, so frequent basting with the rendered fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown. Roasting very hot over a short period cooks the meat quickly, so the timing matters to avoid drying it out.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, currant):

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, currant. 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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