How many people does one whole duck serve?

A 2.2 kg (about 4.9 lb) whole duck yields roughly 880 g of cooked meat, which serves four people generously as a main course, or six as part of a larger menu.

Why is the yield only about 40%?

Bone, rendered fat, and moisture loss account for most of the difference. Duck carries far more fat than chicken, and a good deal of it leaves the bird during cooking.

Should I buy one large duck or two small ones?

Two smaller birds cook faster and give more crisp skin per portion. One larger bird carves better as a centrepiece and leaves more carcass for stock.

Tool

Whole-Duck Serving Calculator

Turn a guest count into a shopping list. Adjust appetite and bird weight, and the calculator returns how many whole ducks to buy plus the cooked meat you can expect.

Your result

2whole ducks

About 4.4 kg (9.7 lb) of raw duck to buy.

Cooked meat per person: 200 g
Cooked meat needed: 1.20 kg
Yield per duck: 880 g
Spare after serving: 560 g

Calculated at 40% edible cooked yield, which accounts for bone, rendered fat, and moisture loss. Adjust the weight slider if your butcher's birds run larger or smaller.

How this is calculated

Assumptions behind these numbers

Edible cooked yield: 40% of raw whole-bird weight, accounting for bone, rendered fat, and moisture loss. A very fatty or very lean bird can move this by several points.
Cooked meat per person: Light 140 g, standard 180 g, hearty 240 g. These are appetite assumptions, not nutritional recommendations.
Bird weight: Your entered raw, whole, oven-ready weight — before roasting and before any stuffing.
Not modelled: Number of courses, side-dish volume, planned leftovers, or carving losses from an unfamiliar bird.

These are portion-planning assumptions only, with no food-safety component. When in doubt, size up: cold roast duck is far better than a short plate.

How the numbers work

The calculator starts from cooked meat per person, not raw weight, because raw weight is the number that misleads people. It then divides by the edible yield of a whole duck to get the number of birds, always rounding up — you cannot buy two thirds of a duck.

How many people does one whole duck serve?: A 2.2 kg (about 4.9 lb) whole duck yields roughly 880 g of cooked meat, which serves four people generously as a main course, or six as part of a larger menu.
Why is the yield only about 40%?: Bone, rendered fat, and moisture loss account for most of the difference. Duck carries far more fat than chicken, and a good deal of it leaves the bird during cooking.
Should I buy one large duck or two small ones?: Two smaller birds cook faster and give more crisp skin per portion. One larger bird carves better as a centrepiece and leaves more carcass for stock.

Cooking this for Thanksgiving? The bird count above is the first line of a longer schedule — ordering, thawing, a single-oven order of play and carving — set out in our Thanksgiving duck dinner plan