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Canard Aux Olives

A duck cooked with olives, bacon, onion, and a brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,779 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Canard Aux Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the duck

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the diced bacon.

  2. Add the duck and brown it evenly.

  3. Remove the duck and bacon, then stir in the flour until it turns a nice brown.

  4. Gradually pour in the boiling water or stock, stirring continuously.

Simmer

  1. Add the bouquet, salt, pepper, and chopped onion, then return the duck and bacon to the pan.

  2. Cover and let it simmer gently on low heat.

  3. Blanch the pitted olives in boiling water for 3-4 minutes.

  4. Add the blanched olives to the duck and simmer for an additional 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the duck on a hot dish, surrounded by olives, and strain the gravy over the top.

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. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Duck (in the method)
Provides the main meat, which is browned first and then gently simmered until tender.
Flour
Browned in the fat and thickens the stock into a gravy.
Butter
Fat for browning the duck and bacon and for cooking the flour.
Streaky bacon
Adds savoury, salty fat that flavours the gravy as it renders.
Spanish olives
Add a briny, savoury note that contrasts with the rich duck and gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling water or stock. Adding liquid gradually while stirring continuously keeps the browned flour smooth; poured in all at once, it can clump into lumps that are hard to whisk out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, olive. 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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