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Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, sage, pepper, salt, onion, and giblets, baked and basted, served with a thickened gravy.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the goose with a mixture of bread crumbs, butter, sage, black pepper, salt, and chopped onion. Do not overstuff.

  3. Sew the openings securely to keep the flavor in and fat out.

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

Roast

  1. Baste frequently with saltwater (and vinegar if desired) and turn often for even browning.

  2. Bake for two hours or more until done.

  3. Remove the goose from the pan and pour off the fat.

Make the gravy

  1. To the remaining brown gravy, add the chopped giblets and the water they were boiled in.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter rubbed together, bring to a boil, and 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
Is the main meat, which turns tender and browns during long roasting.
Bread crumbs
Soak up fat and juices 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 pan juices into a smooth, body-rich gravy when cooked with butter.
Onion
Adds aroma and mild sweetness as it softens inside the stuffing.

The step that matters

Pour off the fat before making the gravy. Rendered goose fat separates and floats on the pan juices. Removing most of it keeps the gravy from tasting greasy, and the flour and butter then thicken the brown juices properly.

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.

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