Skip to main content
Main

Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with mashed potatoes, onions, sage, salt, and pepper, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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

  1. Clean the goose thoroughly and wash it like a turkey.

  2. Make a dressing by mixing the mashed potatoes, chopped onions, sage, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stuff the dressing into the body of the goose and sew it up.

Roast and make gravy

  1. Roast the goose at 400°F (200°C) for two hours, basting it in its own drippings.

  2. Halfway through roasting, remove excess fat from the roaster.

  3. Use the remaining drippings to make gravy, boiling the liver as you would for turkey.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 into the drippings used for basting and gravy.
Potatoes
Bind the dressing with starch and add moisture and body to the stuffing.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and moisture to the dressing as they soften during roasting.
Sage
Adds a herbal, aromatic flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Removing excess fat halfway through roasting. Goose carries a large amount of fat under the skin. Pouring off the rendered fat during roasting keeps the bird from becoming greasy and lets the skin crisp, while the remaining drippings stay flavourful for gravy.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, 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.

More roasted goose recipes

with Apple Dressing 4with Apple Sauce 3with Sage and Onions 3 See all 130 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes