Skip to main content
Main

Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, sage, pepper, salt, onion, and giblets, baked and basted until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the goose

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, sage, black pepper, salt, and chopped onion.

  3. Stuff the goose loosely with the mixture.

  4. Stitch the openings securely.

Roast

  1. Place the goose in a baking pan with a little water.

  2. Baste frequently with a mixture of salt and water (add vinegar if desired).

  3. Turn the goose often to ensure even browning.

  4. Bake for two hours or until fully cooked.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the goose from the pan.

  2. Pour off the fat.

  3. Add the chopped giblets and the water they were boiled in to the remaining brown gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter rubbed together.

  5. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  6. Serve.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Goose
Provides the main meat and rendered fat that bastes the bird as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and helps the gravy thicken smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the stuffing as it softens during roasting.

The step that matters

Turn and baste the goose often. Goose has a lot of fat under the skin. Turning and basting helps the fat drain and the skin brown evenly, while a dry surface would brown unevenly and toughen.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sage, pepper, vinegar, 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 roast goose recipes

and Turkey 4with Apple Dressing 4Potato Stuffing for 3with Potato Stuffing 3with Sage and Onion Stuffing 3 See all 150 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes