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Roast Duck or Goose

Roast duck or goose stuffed with forcemeat, seasoned, roasted, served with apple sauce and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,078 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Duck or Goose

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Clean the duck and twist the pinions around the back.

  2. Leave the feet on or remove them by breaking the bone below the joint.

  3. Stuff the duck with forcemeat, sew up the slit, and secure the legs against the body with a skewer and cord.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes for a young duck, or 1 hour for a 4-pound duck.

  2. Make brown gravy in the dripping pan using stock from the giblets, chopping the liver and gizzard, and skimming off grease.

  3. Serve hot with apple sauce.

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. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Apple + livertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + livertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together499 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  5. Flour + livertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the main meat, whose fat renders during roasting and crisps the skin.
Forcemeat
Fills the cavity and moistens the meat from the inside as it cooks.
Giblets
Their stock and chopped liver and gizzard form the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy with starch as it cooks in the pan juices.

The step that matters

Skimming off grease from the gravy. Duck releases a lot of fat in the dripping pan. Leaving too much fat in the gravy makes it greasy and keeps it from thickening and tasting clean.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sauce, liver):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Applethe original
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sauce, liver. 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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