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Braised Ducks

A braised duck dish cooked with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, white wine, and turnip.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braised Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and braise

  1. Prepare the ducks as for roasting.

  2. Place ducks in a stew-pan with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, and pepper.

  3. Cover with broth and add white wine.

  4. Simmer over gentle heat, basting frequently until done.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove ducks and keep warm.

  2. Cut turnip into pieces and fry in butter until browned.

  3. Drain turnip and cook in the duck braising liquid until tender.

  4. Strain and thicken the gravy.

  5. Serve ducks with gravy poured over and garnish with turnip pieces.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Young ducks
Provide the meat that is braised slowly until tender in the covered pot.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor to the braising liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid and gravy.
Turnip
Browned in butter for color and caramelized flavor, then tenderized in the braising liquid.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory aroma to the braising liquid that flavors the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer over gentle heat, basting frequently until done. A gentle simmer keeps the duck tender and the braising liquid clear, while a hard boil toughens the meat and makes the gravy cloudy. Frequent basting keeps the exposed skin moist and flavorful.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, thyme, parsley, pepper, white wine, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, thyme, parsley, pepper, white wine, butter. 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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