Name: Roast Goose
Ingredients: 1 whole goose; stuffing of choice

Roast Goose

Ingredients

1 whole goose
stuffing of choice

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Prepare the goose by removing any excess fat and cleaning it.
Stuff the cavity of the goose with your chosen stuffing.
Place the goose on a roasting rack in a roasting pan.

Roast

Roast the goose for about 2 hours, or until the internal temperature reaches 165°F (74°C).
Let the goose rest for 15 minutes before carving.

Carve

Carve the breast by slicing evenly from the top down towards the bottom.
Remove the legs by cutting through the joint and pulling them away from the body.

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

What each ingredient does

Goose: Its fat renders out during roasting, helping the skin crisp and the meat stay rich and moist.

The step that matters

Roasting to the target internal temperature. Time alone cannot show when the thickest parts of the bird are cooked, since size and oven behaviour vary. Checking that the internal temperature reaches 165°F (74°C) confirms the meat is cooked through. Stopping early leaves it underdone, while going too long dries the meat.

“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.