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Roast Goose

Roast goose is a whole bird roasted with a dressing of onion, sage, apple, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Prepare the goose for roasting as you would a turkey, singeing off any hair carefully.

  2. Mix the minced onion, sage, and apple with bread crumbs and seasoning for the dressing.

Roast

  1. Place the goose in a covered roaster and pour boiling water into the dripping pan below.

  2. Dredge the goose with flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover and cook for 20 minutes per pound, adjusting time for age.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Chop the giblets finely and stir them into the gravy, thickening with browned flour.

  2. Serve with apple sauce.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 fat that renders during roasting and flavours the drippings.
Flour
Dredged over the bird and browned to thicken the gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the dressing.
Apple
Adds moisture and mild sweetness that balances the rich goose fat.

The step that matters

Cooking time by weight and age. Goose is fatty and dense, so cooking time must follow weight and age; too little time leaves the meat underdone, while too much dries the lean parts. The record gives a rate of 20 minutes per pound, adjusted for age.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sage, flour, 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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