Name: Pot Roast of Wild Duck
Ingredients: 2 Mallards or Canvasback ducks; 1 bay leaf; 2 pepper berries; 1 sprig garlic; 1 small onion; water (hot)

Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Pot Roast of Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Place the ducks in a pot and add the bay leaf, pepper berries, garlic, and onion.
Cover the ducks with hot water.
Cook the ducks like a beef pot roast until tender.

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.

Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks: Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the cooking liquid.
Garlic: Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the cooking liquid.