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Braised Ducks

Braised Ducks is a dish of young ducks cooked slowly with bacon, carrot, onion, herbs, 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 the ducks

  1. Prepare the ducks as you would for roasting.

Braise

  1. In a stew pan, place the ducks with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, and pepper.

  2. Cover with broth and add the white wine.

  3. Simmer over gentle heat, basting frequently, until the ducks are cooked through.

  4. Remove the ducks and keep them warm.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the turnip into pieces and fry in butter until browned.

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

  3. Strain and thicken the gravy, then pour it over the ducks 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

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist simmering.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the braising liquid and the duck.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich braising liquid.
Turnip
Browns in butter for sweetness, then turns tender in the braising liquid.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the braising liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens into the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer over gentle heat, basting frequently, until the ducks are cooked through.. A gentle simmer cooks the meat slowly so it becomes tender without toughening. Frequent basting keeps the exposed skin moist so it does not dry out.

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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