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Stewed Ducks

A duck stew made with onions, stock, tomato ketchup, lemon juice, brown roux, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the duck

  1. Season the jointed duck with pepper, salt, and flour.

  2. Heat the dripping in a frying pan.

  3. Fry the sliced onion until light brown, then remove the onion from the pan.

  4. Add the duck to the pan and cook for 10 minutes, turning two or three times.

Stew and finish

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cold stock and the jointed duck, cover, and stew slowly until tender.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, tomato ketchup, and lemon juice, then simmer for 3 minutes.

  3. Stir in the brown roux and cook for 1 minute to thicken.

  4. Add the sherry and serve.

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

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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
Provides the main protein and rich flavour that the stew is built around.
Flour
Coats the duck so it browns in the pan and helps thicken the sauce.
Onion
Browned first to add sweetness and savoury depth to the stew.
Stock or consommé
Supplies the liquid that gently cooks the duck until tender and forms the base of the sauce.
Brown roux
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer, more body-filled sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the duck slowly until tender. Gentle, covered simmering lets tough connective tissue break down into gelatin, so the meat turns tender and moist. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, tomato, ketchup, lemon, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, tomato, ketchup, lemon, sherry. 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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