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Roast Wild Goose

Roasted wild goose stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, onion, apple, and sage, glazed with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 Wild Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Remove feathers.

  2. Dry, singe, and draw the goose.

  3. Wash the goose, then soak it in salted cold water for 30 minutes.

  4. Rinse in cold water and wipe dry.

  5. Rub the inside with salt.

  6. Fill with a mixture of moistened bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, chopped onion, chopped apple, and sage.

  7. Sew up the opening.

Roast

  1. Place the goose on its back in a roasting pan with 1 cup hot water and 2 tablespoons butter.

  2. Sprinkle with salt.

  3. Place thin slices of fat salt pork on the breast.

  4. Baste frequently during the first hour.

  5. Add water as needed until the meat is tender.

Make the glaze and serve

  1. Place the goose on a hot platter and garnish with parsley.

  2. Drain the fat from the pan.

  3. Add 1 cup hot water to the glaze, then add butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Thicken with browned flour and strain.

  5. Serve the glaze in a sauceboat.

  6. Serve the goose with traditional stewed apple.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wild goose
Is the main meat, cooked slowly until tender while basted with its own fat and liquid.
Fat salt pork
Lays fat over the breast, basting the meat and keeping it moist as it roasts.
Moistened bread crumbs
Soak up cooking juices and fat in the stuffing, keeping it soft and moist.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a glaze and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the meat and stuffing moist and flavourful.

The step that matters

Add water as needed until meat tender. Wild goose is lean and dense, and the pan can dry out during a long roast. Adding liquid as needed keeps the pan moist so the meat becomes tender rather than tough.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, onion, bread, sage, pork, 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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