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A Salmi of Wild Ducks

A stew of roasted wild duck pieces with a savory gravy made from stock, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Salmi of Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Roast the wild ducks until browned.

  2. Cut the legs, wings, and breast into slices.

  3. Set the sliced duck pieces aside.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, combine the trimmings of the ducks, shallots, garlic, stock, and red wine.

  2. Let the mixture stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Melt the butter in a pan. Add flour to the melted butter.

  5. Stir in the strained liquid.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  7. Strain the liquid again.

  8. Boil once more.

  9. Add lemon juice and season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the duck.

  2. Simmer gently until cooked through, avoiding boiling.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the meat that is browned, sliced, and cooked through in the gravy.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavor to the stewed liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the stewed liquid.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth gravy with the melted butter.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Once the sliced duck is in the gravy, a rolling boil can toughen the meat and make it dry. Gentle heat lets the pieces cook through while staying tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, clove, garlic, red wine, butter, flour):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, clove, garlic, red wine, 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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