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Roast and Baked Goose

A goose stuffed with bread, butter, and herbs, roasted and basted in water, served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and Baked Goose

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Prepare the goose as you would a turkey.

  2. Soak the bread in hot water, then mix in salt, pepper, ¼ pound of butter, and sage or thyme if desired.

  3. Fill the body of the goose with the mixture, sew up the slit, and tie the legs together.

  4. Insert a skewer through the hips and place the heart and liver between the wings and body, securing with a skewer.

  5. Place 1 pint of water and 1 teaspoon of salt in the roasting pan for basting.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the goose over a steady fire, basting frequently and turning it as it cooks.

  2. When nearly done, add the remaining ¼ pound of butter to the pan and baste with it.

  3. Dredge a little flour over the goose and turn it to ensure even cooking, allowing 15 minutes per pound.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. If the gravy is too thin, remove some, heat it, and stir in a batter made of 1 teaspoon of flour and cold water until smooth.

  2. Strain the gravy into a tureen before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 roasted meat, whose fat renders out during cooking.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown as it roasts.
Wheat bread
Soaked and mixed into the stuffing, it adds body and soaks up fat and moisture.
Wheat flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks into a smooth, slightly thick sauce.

The step that matters

Allowing 15 minutes per pound. Roasting time depends on weight, and a large goose must cook through fully, so underestimating the time risks undercooked meat near the bone, while the fat must render slowly for even cooking.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, bread, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, bread, pepper, butter, 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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