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Roast Goose

Roast goose served with apple garnish and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the goose and stuffing

  1. Clean and wash the goose thoroughly, rinse well, and wipe dry inside and out.

  2. Blanch and drain the chopped onion.

  3. Fry the onion in 2 tablespoons of butter.

  4. Mix the fried onion with well-seasoned mashed potatoes.

  5. Add sage if desired.

  6. Truss the goose.

Roast the goose

  1. Roast the goose at 400°F (200°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Cover the breast with buttered paper for the first hour.

Make the giblet gravy

  1. Soak the giblets in salted water.

  2. Scald the giblets.

  3. Cook the giblets gently in a little water until tender.

  4. Chop the giblets and add them to the gravy.

  5. Pour off the fat from the dripping pan.

  6. Add fresh fat (butter, pork fat, or dripping).

  7. Brown 2 tablespoons of flour in the fat.

  8. Blend the browned flour with 1 pint of strong stock.

  9. Pour the gravy onto a hot platter.

  10. Place the roasted goose on top of the gravy.

Cook and glaze the apples

  1. Pare the small, round, sour apples smoothly.

  2. Brown the apples in 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  3. Stew the apples in broth enough to barely cover them.

  4. Remove the apples as soon as they are tender.

  5. Boil the broth to a glaze.

  6. Roll the apples in the glazed broth before serving.

  7. Garnish the goose with cooked apples.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  3. Potato + sagetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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
Provides the main meat, whose fat renders during roasting to baste the bird.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the onion and apples brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy when browned in fat first.
Sour apples
Their tartness balances the rich goose, and sugar helps them caramelise in a glaze.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body to the stuffing, softening the onion mixture.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in the fat. Cooking flour in fat until golden removes raw starch taste and lets it thicken the stock smoothly without lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, potato, sage, flour, sugar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, potato, sage, flour, sugar. 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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