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Salmi De Canard

A hearty duck stew simmered with onions, herbs, and a splash of port wine, finished with a corn‑starch thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmi De Canard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Combine giblets and hot water in a saucepan.

  2. Add chopped onions, parsley, cloves, sage, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour until well flavored.

  4. Add duck pieces and stew slowly for 2 hours, adding more boiling water if necessary.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in port wine and lemon juice.

  2. Blend corn-starch with a little cold water and stir it into the boiling sauce; boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Arrange duck on a hot dish, pour gravy over it, and garnish with croutons.

  4. Optionally, add boiled peas or olives to the stew 10–15 minutes 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 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

Duck
Slow stewing turns the tough meat tender and gives the broth its rich flavor.
Giblets
Simmered first, they build a deeper, meatier base flavor for the stock.
Onions
Break down during simmering, adding sweetness and body to the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that balances the rich duck flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty broth.
Corn-starch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a glossy gravy when boiled.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with corn-starch. Starch must be blended with cold water first so it does not clump, then boiled so the granules swell and thicken the sauce fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, clove, sage, pepper, port wine, lemon, corn):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, clove, sage, pepper, port wine, lemon, corn. 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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