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Duck, with Cabbage

A braised duck served with cabbage, ham, sausages, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Duck, with Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cabbage in salted water for five minutes, then drain and press it.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, add fat bacon to cover the bottom and brown the trussed duck.

  2. Place a piece of lean ham under the duck after browning, then add cabbage on top.

  3. Surround the duck with more cabbage and little sausages.

  4. Add sweet herbs, cloves, peppercorns, onion, carrot, and turnip if available.

  5. Moisten with stock or gravy, cover, and cook until done, turning the sausages as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve with ham strips laid around the duck.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in moisture.
Cabbage
Absorbs the savoury cooking juices and adds bulk and a mild sweetness as it softens.
Fat bacon
Adds fat for browning the duck and carries savoury flavour into the dish.
Lean ham
Contributes salty, savoury flavour to the cooking liquid and the cabbage.
Sausages
Release fat and seasoning into the cabbage, adding richness and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Browning the trussed duck in fat bacon. Searing the surface in hot fat develops browned, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Skipping or rushing this leaves the dish pale and less flavourful.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, ham, onion, carrot, turnip):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, ham, onion, carrot, turnip. 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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