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Wild Duck, Roasted

A roasted wild duck basted with butter, seasoned with salt and cayenne, served with lemon and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Wild Duck, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Pluck the wild duck carefully.

  2. Draw the wild duck carefully.

  3. Wipe out the inside of the duck.

  4. Cut off the head and neck.

  5. Scald the feet.

  6. Score the duck's breast.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the duck close to a sharp fire for a few minutes to keep the gravy in.

  2. Baste the duck generously with butter until cooked through.

  3. Froth the duck well.

  4. Cut the lemon in half.

  5. Dip one half of the lemon in salt.

  6. Dip the other half of the lemon in cayenne.

  7. Squeeze both halves of lemon into the duck's breast.

  8. Serve the duck with gravy or sauce.

  9. Serve the lemon alongside 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, whose juices and fat carry the flavour of the dish.
Butter
Basting fat that moistens the skin and helps it brown during roasting.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fresh aroma that cut through the rich, fatty duck meat.

The step that matters

Place the duck close to a sharp fire for a few minutes. A short blast of intense heat sears the outside and helps seal in juices, as the record intends, while avoiding overcooking the interior. Too little heat leaves the skin pale and the meat soggy.

“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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