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Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with a breadcrumb and herb dressing, served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Clean the goose, wash it, and dry it thoroughly.

  2. Season the goose inside and out with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, sweet marjoram, and minced onion.

  4. Fill the goose with the dressing and truss it firmly.

Roast the goose

  1. Place the goose on a spit and roast it, basting with butter to prevent burning.

Make the gravy

  1. Clean the giblets and place them in a saucepan with a little water, salt, and pepper; boil them.

  2. Add the giblet broth to the gravy that dripped from the goose.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour and let it boil for a few minutes.

  4. Adjust seasoning with more pepper and salt if necessary.

  5. Serve the gravy with the roasted goose.

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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Marjoram + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 fat that renders and flavors the whole dish as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat in the dressing, keeping the stuffing moist and lightly textured.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for basting, helping the skin brown and resist burning.
Flour
Thickens the dripping and giblet broth into a smooth gravy when cooked in butter.
Giblets
Simmered to make a broth that adds savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the goose with butter. Goose is fatty and the skin can scorch before the interior cooks through. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and golden, and the drippings collected below become the base for the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, bread, butter, marjoram, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, butter, marjoram, 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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