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A Souties of Wild Duck

A sautéed dish of wild duck with Port wine, stock, mace, shallots, Seville orange juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

A Souties of Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Cut the breasts of the wild ducks into thin slices.

  2. Butter a saucepan and sprinkle a little shallot in it.

  3. Add the Port wine and lay the wild duck slices on top.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine the legs and other parts of the ducks with stock, mace, shallots, and Port wine.

  2. Simmer slowly for two hours until the liquid is reduced by half.

  3. Strain the liquid into another pot and skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the saucepan to the stove for a few minutes and turn the wild duck slices.

  2. Combine the cooked duck with the strained liquid, add Seville orange juice, and garnish with paste.

  3. Add a little Cayenne pepper before serving.

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. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Port wine + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together695 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the meat, with breasts sliced thin and legs and other parts used for the stock-based sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and acidity, flavouring the duck and reducing into the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour from the simmered duck parts.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the saucepan, helping the duck slices brown lightly.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the liquid is reduced by half. Slow simmering concentrates the stock and Port into a richer sauce without boiling off too fast. Reducing too quickly can scorch the liquid or make it overly salty and bitter, so keep the heat gentle and watch the volume.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, port wine, orange, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, port wine, orange, pepper. 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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