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Roast Goose

A whole goose stuffed with onions, sage, bread crumbs, butter, pork, and egg, roasted and basted with water, served with watercress, gravy, and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the goose

  1. Truss the goose by cutting the neck close to the back and leaving the skin long enough to fold over.

  2. Flatten the breastbone with a rolling pin and secure the legs and wings with ties or skewers.

  3. Stuff the goose with a mixture of onions, sage, bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, egg, and chopped pork.

  4. Sprinkle the top of the goose with salt, pepper, and flour.

  5. Reserve the giblets to boil and chop for gravy.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the goose for at least 1½ hours; older geese may require 3 to 4 hours in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) with hot water in the baking pan.

  2. Baste the goose frequently while roasting.

  3. Baste with water often, and towards the end, use butter and a little flour.

Serve

  1. Decorate with watercress and serve with brown giblet gravy and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

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, whose fat renders during roasting and keeps the flesh moist.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften inside the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, giving the stuffing body and a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the skin brown during basting.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Flour
Helps the basting fat and juices form a browned, lightly thickened coating.

The step that matters

Roast long enough for older geese. Older birds have tougher meat and more connective tissue, so they need a much longer, slow roast to become tender. Cooking them only for the minimum time can leave the meat chewy. Frequent basting keeps the surface from drying while the fat renders.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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