Skip to main content
Main

Wild Ducks

A roasted wild duck dish flavored with carrot, onion, sage, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Wild Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ducks

  1. Parboil the wild ducks with a small carrot or onion for flavor absorption.

  2. Discard the carrot or onion and soak the ducks in fresh water for 30 minutes.

  3. Stuff the ducks with bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, sage, and onion.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Roast the ducks until brown and tender, basting for half the time with butter and water, then with drippings.

  2. After removing the ducks, add currant jelly and cayenne to the gravy, thicken with browned flour, and serve in a tureen.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild ducks
Provide the main meat, which is cooked until brown and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb seasoning and drippings in the stuffing, keeping it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown during basting.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks until brown and tender, basting for half the time. Wild duck is lean and dries out easily, so regular basting with fat and liquid keeps the meat moist while the skin browns. Cooking to tenderness without overcooking protects the texture.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, bread, pepper, sage, butter, currant, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, bread, pepper, sage, butter, currant, 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.

More wild duck recipes

Roasted 111Stew 21Sauce 12Roast 11Roast 9Hash 6 See all 13 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes