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Mock Duck

A stuffed flank steak shaped like a duck, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Mock Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Have your butcher make a pocket in the flank steak.

  2. Wash the steak well and fill the pocket with a mixture of bread crumbs, minced onion, sage, salt, and pepper.

  3. Combine the filling with the egg and butter, then fasten the pocket with skewers.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Season the beef and place it in a covered pan with boiling water.

  2. Cook slowly until the meat is tender, then remove the cover and brown the meat.

  3. Thicken the gravy in the pan with flour mixed smooth with cold water.

Serve

  1. Serve the 'duck' on a platter with gravy around it, hot or cold.

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. Sage + peppertop 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. Onion + peppertop 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. Onion + sagetop 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

Flank steak
Forms the outer meat that is cooked tender around the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling a light, soft body.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds together inside the pocket.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the filling taste savory.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquid into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the meat slowly until tender. Flank steak is a lean, tough cut with dense muscle fibres. Slow, moist cooking under a cover breaks down connective tissue gradually, so the meat becomes tender rather than dry and chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, pepper, egg, 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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