Skip to main content
Main

Salmi of Duck

A duck stew made with marinated meat, broth, and mushrooms, served with fried bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Salmi of Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the duck meat into neat dice and the bones, stuffing, and skin into small pieces.

  2. Marinate the meat in salad oil and lemon juice, and refrigerate while preparing the gravy.

  3. Cover the bones and scraps with cold water.

  4. Add parsley, pepper, and salt.

Make the gravy

  1. Simmer for two hours after boiling.

  2. Strain the broth, then thicken it with browned flour mixed with butter.

  3. Add the juice of half an onion.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Add the marinated meat.

  6. Reduce heat and let it simmer without boiling.

  7. Remove the meat and arrange it on a flat dish.

  8. Add half a can of champignons or fresh mushrooms to the gravy.

  9. Simmer for three minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour over the meat.

  2. Garnish with slices of fried bread.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Duck meat
Provides the main flavour and tender, meaty body of the salmi.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the duck and helps tenderise the marinated meat.
Champignons or fresh mushrooms
Adds earthy savoury flavour and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Let the gravy simmer without boiling. Once the marinated meat goes in, a hard boil can toughen the meat proteins and make the gravy cloudy or greasy. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lemon, parsley, pepper, flour, butter, mushroom. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes