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Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with potato stuffing, covered with salt pork, baked at 400°F, served with apple sauce and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and watercress work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the goose

  1. Scrub the goose with hot soapy water.

  2. Draw and wash it thoroughly in cold water.

  3. Wipe it dry.

  4. Stuff the goose.

  5. Truss the goose.

Season and arrange

  1. Sprinkle the entire breast with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover the breast with strips of salt pork.

  3. Place the goose on a rack in a roasting pan.

  4. Pour water into the pan underneath.

Roast and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F for 2.5 hours, basting every 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the pork during the last 30 minutes of cooking.

  3. Garnish the dish with watercress.

  4. 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. Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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 its fat renders out during roasting.
Salt pork
Its fat bastes the breast as it melts and adds savory flavor.

The step that matters

Remove the pork during the last 30 minutes of cooking. Taking off the salt pork near the end lets the breast skin brown and crisp. Leaving it on would keep the skin soft and greasy under the fat.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, potato, sauce, watercress. 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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