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To Roast Wild Ducks

Roasted wild ducks stuffed with fruit‑syrup soaked bread, floured, browned over a brisk fire, basted with butter, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak a piece of bread in fruit syrup and place it inside the ducks.

  2. Flour the ducks well.

Roast

  1. Place the ducks near a clear, brisk fire to brown quickly while retaining their juices.

  2. Baste the ducks freely with butter.

  3. Roast the ducks quickly for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce for wild fowl.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Syrup + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Syrup + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Wild ducks
Form the main meat that is browned and roasted quickly to stay juicy.
Bread
Soaked in fruit syrup, it sits inside the ducks and adds moisture to the cavity.
Fruit syrup
Adds sweetness and flavor, and helps the surface brown as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the skin so it browns and crisps well during roasting.
Butter
Basting adds fat and moisture to the surface and promotes golden browning.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks quickly for 30 minutes. A hot, fast roast browns the outside while sealing in juices. Cooking too slowly or at too low a heat lets the meat dry out before the skin browns.

“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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