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Wild Duck with Orange Salad

A roasted wild duck served with a salad of sliced oranges dressed in sugar, vinegar, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wild Duck with Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and roast

  1. Roast the duck in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Peel and slice the oranges.

Make the salad and serve

  1. Sprinkle the oranges with sugar, vinegar, and salad oil.

  2. Serve the duck on a plate and the salad on a separate dish.

  3. Serve port wine sauce alongside.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + tarragontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Orange + cherviltop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chervil + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together561 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 protein; roasting renders its fat and crisps the skin.
Oranges
Add sweetness and acidity that cut through the richness of the duck.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and oranges.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the orange salad.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and coats the orange slices.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, chervil, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chervil, vinegar, sugar. 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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