Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Duck along with all the trcipes employing Duck presented on this site, with 97 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Duck recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Duck as a major wild food ingredient.



Domestic ducks (mainly mallards, Anas platyrhynchos domesticus, with some Muscovy ducks, Cairina moschata domestica) are ducks that have been domesticated and raised for meat and eggs. A few are kept for show, or for their ornamental value. Most varieties of domesticated ducks, apart from the Muscovy duck and hybrids, are descended from the wild mallard, which was domesticated in China around 2000 BC.

Duck farming is simplified by their reliable flocking behaviour, and their ability to forage effectively for themselves. Over 80% of global duck production is in China. Breeds such as White Pekin are raised for meat, while the prolific Indian Runner can produce over 300 eggs per year. In East and Southeast Asia, polycultures such as rice-duck farming are widely practised: the ducks assist the rice with manure and by eating small pest animals, so that the same land produces rice and ducks at once.

Domestic ducks appear from whole-genome sequencing to have originated from a single domestication event of mallards during the Neolithic, followed by rapid selection for lineages favouring meat or egg production. They were probably domesticated in Southern China around 200 BCE – by the rice paddy-farming ancestors of modern Southeast Asians – and spread outwards from that region. There are few archaeological records, so the date of domestication is unknown; the earliest written records are in Han Chinese writings from central China dating to about 500 BC. Duck farming for both meat and eggs is a widespread and ancient industry in Southeast Asia.

Wild ducks were hunted extensively in Egypt and other parts of the world in ancient times, but were not domesticated. Ducks are documented in Ancient Rome from the second century BC, but descriptions – such as by Columella – suggest that ducks in Roman agriculture were captured in the wild, not domesticated; there was no duck breeding in Roman times, so eggs from wild ducks were needed to start duck farms.

Mallards were domesticated in Eurasia. The Muscovy duck was domesticated in Mexico and South America.



Most breeds and varieties of domestic duck derive from the mallard, Anas platyrhynchos; a few derive from Cairina moschata, the Muscovy duck, or are mullards, hybrids of these with A. platyrhynchos stock. Domestication has greatly altered their characteristics. Domestic ducks are mostly promiscuous, where wild mallards are monogamous. Domestic ducks have lost the mallard's territorial behaviour, and are less aggressive than mallards. Despite these differences, domestic ducks frequently mate with wild mallard, producing fully fertile hybrid offspring. A wild mallard weighs some 1.1 kg (2.4 lb), but large breeds like the Aylesbury may weigh 4.6 kg (10 lb) (and hybrids even more), while small breeds like the Appleyard may be only 0.7 kg (1.5 lb). Those breeds are raised for meat and eggs, while other breeds are purely ornamental, having been selected for their crests, tufts, or striking plumage, for exhibition in competitions.

Since ancient times, the duck has been eaten as food. Usually only the breast and thigh meat is eaten. It does not need to be hung before preparation, and is often braised or roasted, sometimes flavoured with bitter orange or with port. Peking duck is a dish of roast duck from Beijing, China, that has been prepared since medieval times. It is today traditionally served with spring pancakes, spring onions and sweet bean sauce.

In France, ducks are used for the production of foie gras de canard. In some cultures the blood of ducks slaughtered for meat is used as food; it may be eaten seasoned and lightly cooked, as in Ireland: 392  or be used as an ingredient, as in a number of regional types of blood soup, among them the czarnina of Poland: 299  and the tiết canh of Vietnam.

Duck eggs are eaten mainly in Asian countries such as China;: 258  in the Philippines, balut – a fertilised duck egg at about 17 days of development, boiled and eaten with salt – is considered a delicacy and is sold as street food.

Humans have hunted ducks since prehistoric times. Excavations of middens in California dating to 7800 – 6400 BP have turned up bones of ducks, including at least one now-extinct flightless species. Ducks were captured in "significant numbers" by Holocene inhabitants of the lower Ohio River valley, suggesting they took advantage of the seasonal bounty provided by migrating waterfowl. Neolithic hunters in locations as far apart as the Caribbean, Scandinavia, Egypt, Switzerland, and China relied on ducks as a source of protein for some or all of the year. Archeological evidence shows that Māori people in New Zealand hunted the flightless Finsch's duck, possibly to extinction, though rat predation may also have contributed to its fate. A similar end awaited the Chatham duck, a species with reduced flying capabilities which went extinct shortly after its island was colonised by Polynesian settlers. It is probable that duck eggs were gathered by Neolithic hunter-gathers as well, though hard evidence of this is uncommon.