Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Wild Ducks

A roasted wild duck seasoned with pepper, salt, and flour, served with a currant jelly gravy and garnished with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the duck

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove the gills from the duck and place 1 teaspoon of black pepper inside.

  3. Sprinkle flour and coarse sea salt on the outside of the duck.

  4. Lay the slice of pickled pork across the breast bone.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the duck in a pan with 1 pint of hot water.

  2. Roast for 20 to 25 minutes, basting frequently.

  3. Make a brown gravy and stir in currant jelly to taste.

  4. Serve the gravy in a boat and garnish the dish with lemon slices and parsley sprigs.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Duck (in the method)
Is the main cooked meat, whose fat renders and whose skin browns during roasting.
Pickled pork
Lies on the breast and adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the meat as it roasts.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich, fatty duck in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the outside of the duck, helping the skin brown and thickening the gravy.

The step that matters

Roast for 20 to 25 minutes, basting frequently. Wild duck is lean and dries out quickly. Basting with the hot liquid and rendered fat keeps the meat moist and helps the skin brown evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, pork, lemon, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, pork, lemon, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes