Name: Roast Goose. Oie Rotie.
Ingredients: 1 young goose; 4 onions; 1 cup of mashed potatoes; 1-2 teaspoons of thyme; 2 sprigs of parsley; 4 apples; 1 ½ tablespoons of lard; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roast Goose. Oie Rotie.

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

Pick the goose by hand without scalding it.
Singe and clean the goose thoroughly.
Season the goose well with salt, pepper, thyme, and parsley.

Roast and serve

Roast the goose in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C), allowing 25 minutes per pound.
Serve with apple sauce or currant jelly.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 its fat renders out during roasting, keeping the meat moist and crisping the skin.
Thyme: Adds a savoury, herbal aroma that flavours the goose as it roasts.

The step that matters

Roast the goose in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C), allowing 25 minutes per pound.. Poultry must be cooked through for safety, and the timing depends on the bird's weight. Undercooking leaves the meat unsafe, while overcooking dries it out, so check doneness rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the apple

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

Limefits better
Lemonfits better
Avocadofits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, thyme, parsley, pepper. 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.