Name: Duck, with Green Peas
Ingredients: 1 duck; 2 cups good gravy; a pinch of sage; 2 cups boiled green peas

Why it works: Sage and peas work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Duck, with Green Peas

Ingredients

1 duck
2 cups good gravy
a pinch of sage
2 cups boiled green peas

Directions

Roast the duck until half done.
Place the duck in a stew pan with the gravy and sage.
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
Add the boiled green peas to thicken the gravy.
Serve the duck on a dish and pour the gravy and peas over it.

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.

Sage + peastop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together204 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

Duck: Provides the main meat, which is partly roasted and then finished by gentle simmering in the gravy.
Green peas: Break down into the gravy and thicken it, adding body and a soft, sweet vegetable flavour.
Gravy: Supplies the liquid that keeps the duck moist while it simmers and forms the sauce served over it.

“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.