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Stewed Duck

A slow‑cooked duck with ham, onion, sage, parsley, catsup, and brown sugar, finished with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Stewed Duck

Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Clean and divide the duck as you would a chicken for fricassee.

  2. Put the duck in a saucepan with the cold ham or salt pork.

  3. Add enough water to cover the duck and stew slowly for at least an hour with the lid on.

  4. Stir in the chopped onion, sage, parsley, catsup, and black pepper.

  5. Stew for another half-hour or until the duck is tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Add the brown sugar and browned flour mixed with cold water.

  2. Boil once and serve in a deep covered dish with green peas.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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 meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy and adds a toasted flavour.
Cold ham or salt pork
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the stewing liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stewed gravy.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and savoury notes of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew slowly with the lid on until tender. Old duck has tough connective tissue that needs long, gentle moist heat to break down. Rushing with a hard boil toughens the meat and leaves it chewy, so the liquid should stay at a slow simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, sage, parsley, pepper, sugar, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sage, parsley, pepper, sugar, 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 stewed duck recipes

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