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Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with a dressing of breadcrumbs, pork fat, onion, sage, and eggs, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare the goose

  1. Wash and dry the goose.

  2. Prepare the dressing by mixing breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, melted butter, minced onion, powdered sage, bits of fat pork, and egg yolks.

  3. Stuff the goose with the dressing.

Roast

  1. Place the goose in a roasting pan with 2 cups of boiling water.

  2. Roast for 2 hours, basting often.

  3. Halfway through, cover the breast with a paste made of flour and water, removing it before browning.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove excess fat from the gravy, thicken with browned flour, add sherry, salt, and pepper, then boil.

  2. Serve the gravy in a boat.

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. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, providing the dish's rich flavour and fat that bastes the bird as it roasts.
Egg yolks
Bind the dressing together so it holds its shape when stuffed into the goose.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the dressing, helping it stay tender as it cooks.
Flour
Forms a paste that shields the breast from over-browning and, when browned, thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Removing the flour paste before browning. The paste protects the breast from scorching during the first half of roasting. If it is left on too long, it burns and can taste bitter, so it must come off before the skin browns.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sage, pork, egg, flour, sherry, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sage, pork, egg, flour, sherry, 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.

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