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Braised Duck

Braised duck with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, and turnip in a white wine gravy.

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 Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the ducks

  1. Prepare the ducks as for roasting.

  2. Place the ducks in a stewpan with bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, and pepper.

  3. Cover the ducks with broth and add white wine.

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

  5. Remove the ducks and keep them hot.

Prepare the turnip and gravy

  1. Cut the turnip into pieces.

  2. Fry the turnip pieces in butter until browned.

  3. Drain the browned turnip pieces.

  4. Cook the turnip pieces in the duck braising liquid until tender.

  5. Strain the braising liquid.

  6. Thicken the strained gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve the ducks with the gravy poured over.

  2. Garnish the serving 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 main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist braising.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and smoky flavor to the braising liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid and gravy.
Turnip
Browning in butter gives caramelized flavor, and cooking in the braise makes it tender.
Carrot
Sweetens and deepens the flavor of the braising liquid that becomes the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer over gentle heat, basting frequently until done. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and moist; a hard boil toughens the proteins and drives off liquid, leaving the duck dry.

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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