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Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, onions, sage, pepper, and salt, baked and basted, served with currant jelly and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Kill the goose at least 24 hours before cooking and cut the neck close to the back.

  2. Flatten the breast bone with a rolling pin and tie the wings and legs securely.

  3. Stuff the goose with a mixture of bread crumbs, butter or salt pork, chopped onions, sage, black pepper, and salt.

  4. Do not overstuff; seal openings tightly to keep flavor in and fat out.

  5. If the goose is not fatty, lard it with salt pork or place a slice on the breast.

Roast

  1. Place the goose in a baking pan with a little water and baste frequently with salt and water.

  2. Turn the goose often to ensure even browning on all sides.

  3. When nearly done, baste with butter and a little flour.

  4. Bake for 2 hours, or longer if the goose is older.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once done, remove from the pan and pour off the fat.

  2. Add chopped giblets (previously stewed until tender) and their cooking water to the brown gravy left in the pan.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter rubbed together, bring to a boil, and serve with currant jelly and apple sauce.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Young goose
The main meat; its fat renders during roasting, keeping the meat moist and the skin browning.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and fat in the stuffing, giving it body and a soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that promotes browning and flavour when basted over the bird.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy when cooked together with butter.
Onions
Add aroma and sweetness to the stuffing as they cook inside the bird.

The step that matters

Do not overstuff the goose. Stuffing swells as it cooks, and a packed cavity slows heat reaching its centre, so the bird and filling can cook unevenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, onion, sage, pepper, flour, apple):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, onion, sage, pepper, flour, apple. 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.

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