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To Boil Goose

A whole goose boiled after soaking in milk and water, served with onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Boil Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and singe the goose carefully.

  2. Soak the goose in lukewarm milk and water for 8 to 10 hours.

  3. Stuff and truss the goose securely.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the goose in a saucepan and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then let it simmer gently until cooked through.

  3. Serve with good onion 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. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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 protein, becoming tender and moist as it cooks slowly in simmering water.
Milk
Used in the soak, where it helps mellow the flavour of the bird.

The step that matters

Simmering gently until cooked through. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can split the skin, so a gentle simmer keeps the goose tender and moist while it cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sauce. 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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