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Roast Wild Duck

Roast Wild Duck is a dish prepared by parboiling, stuffing, roasting, and serving with a gravy of currant jelly and Cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 Wild Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the duck as directed.

  2. Discard the carrot or onion.

  3. Soak the duck in fresh water for 30 minutes.

Roast

  1. Stuff the duck with seasoned bread crumbs, pepper, salt, sage, and onion.

  2. Roast the duck until brown and tender.

  3. Baste the duck for half the time with butter and water.

  4. Baste the duck with drippings.

  5. Remove the duck.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add currant jelly and Cayenne to the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  3. Serve the gravy in a tureen.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Wild duck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and browned through roasting.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and fat in the stuffing, giving it body and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the duck skin brown and gives the basting liquid richness.
Browned flour
Starch that thickens the drippings into a smooth, body-rich gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy finish that balances the rich gravy.
Dried sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with browned flour. Flour starch thickens only when it is dispersed in liquid and heated. Stirring it in smoothly and simmering it avoids lumps and gives a glossy, even gravy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sage, onion, butter, flour. 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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