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Breast of Canvas-back Duck

A pan‑fried breast of canvas‑back duck seasoned with pepper, sea salt, and served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Breast of Canvas-back Duck

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a chafing dish until very hot.

  2. Add the duck breast and fry for 3.5 minutes.

  3. Turn the duck breast and fry for another 3 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Serve with currant jelly.

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. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck breast
Provides the main protein; searing in hot butter browns the surface while the interior stays tender.
Butter
Conducts heat to the surface of the duck and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot butter. The butter must be very hot before the duck goes in, so the surface sears and browns quickly instead of steaming. Starting cold leads to greyish, greasy meat.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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