What happened to my duck? This happened a couple of years ago, but I still don't have an answer. Christmas eve. I had a duck in the oven. I tried to cook it at a slightly lower temperature and a little longer than the recipe dictated. Also, I didn't turn the duck over at all.

The duck was completely done. My wife complained about the horrible taste of the breast, while I was happily eating the leg. Later on I found that the breast was foul smelling and tasting...

Any idea why this would happen? Did I cook too long, should I have turned the duck over, why should the leg be tasty and the breast foul???
Assuming you didn't do some kind of "flavor injection" treatment, there is absolutely no reason why one part of a bird would taste radically different from another. I'm going to go with "Bad Duck."

Cooking the bird slowly seriously reduces the possibility of a "hot spot" causing some kind of local taste variance. Breast meat will become overdone at the point where dark meat is still tasty, but that wouldn't explain smell or taste, and unpleasant smells are almost always related to bacterial issues.

If it was discolored, it could have been local bruising, which would cause some taste issues, but, again, wouldn't explain the smell.