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Roast Goose

A whole goose roasted with a breadcrumb and onion dressing, served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the goose, wash it, and wipe it dry.

  2. Season the goose inside and out with salt and pepper.

  3. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, pepper, salt, butter, sweet marjoram, and minced onion.

  4. Fill the goose with the dressing and truss it firmly.

Roast

  1. Roast the goose on a spit, basting it with butter to prevent burning.

Make the gravy

  1. Clean the giblets and place them in a saucepan with a little water, salt, and pepper; boil them.

  2. Add the giblet cooking liquid to the gravy from the goose.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour and let it boil for a few minutes.

  4. Adjust seasoning with more salt and pepper if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve the gravy with the roasted goose.

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 + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Marjoram + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Goose
Forms the main body of the dish, with its fat rendering during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb cooking juices and fat, giving the dressing body and moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the skin brown while basting.
Flour
Its starch swells when boiled with butter, thickening the gravy.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory sweetness to the dressing as it cooks inside the goose.
Sweet marjoram
Contributes a mild, aromatic herb flavor to the dressing.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with butter and flour. The flour must be well blended with the butter and then boiled, so its starch swells and thickens the gravy and the raw flour taste cooks off. Stopping early leaves the gravy thin or pasty.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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