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To Boil a Goose with Onion-Sauce

A goose boiled with onion and sage, seasoned with pepper and salt, and soaked in boiling milk overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 5,388 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil a Goose with Onion-Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Singe the goose.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the goose.

  3. Let it soak overnight.

  4. Remove the goose.

  5. Dry it thoroughly with a cloth.

  6. Season it with pepper and salt.

  7. Stuff the goose with chopped onion and sage.

  8. Sew it up at the neck and vent.

  9. Hang the goose by the legs.

  10. Leave it until the next day.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the goose in a pan of cold water.

  2. Cover it.

  3. Boil slowly for one hour.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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; its fat and connective tissue soften during slow boiling, leaving it tender.
Milk
Soaks the goose overnight, helping to mellow its flavour and soften the skin.
Onion
Stuffed into the goose, it adds mild sweetness and aroma as the bird cooks.
Sage
Stuffed into the goose, it adds an herbal aroma that perfumes the meat.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for one hour. Gentle simmering keeps the meat tender and moist, while a hard boil toughens proteins and makes the skin split and the meat dry and stringy.

Flavor stand-ins for the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, pepper, onion):

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Celerybetter flavor fit
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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