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Roast Ducks

Roast ducks stuffed with mashed potatoes, sage, and onion, basted with sweet fat pork, served with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the ducks nicely.

  2. Stuff the ducks with a mixture of mashed potatoes, sage, and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  3. Optionally stuff one duck with prunes for variety.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the ducks in a pan and baste them frequently with slices of sweet fat pork.

  2. Make a rich gravy.

  3. Stir the gravy in Worcestershire sauce.

  4. Serve the ducks with apple sauce.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 is roasted until cooked through.
Mashed potatoes
Fill the cavity and add moisture and body to the stuffing.
Sweet fat pork
Bastes the ducks, adding fat that keeps the skin and meat moist and browned.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the gravy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, sage, onion, pepper, pork, sauce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, sage, onion, pepper, pork, sauce. 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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