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Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed with potato stuffing, covered in salt pork, baked until tender, 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

  1. Scrub the goose with hot soapy water, then draw, wash thoroughly in cold water, and wipe dry.

  2. Stuff the goose, truss it, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover the entire breast with the strips of salt pork.

Roast

  1. Place the goose on a rack in a dripping pan and pour the water into the pan underneath.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 2.5 hours, basting every 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the pork during the last 30 minutes of baking.

Serve

  1. Garnish with watercress and 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, whose fat renders out during slow roasting.
Salt pork
Its fat bastes the breast, adding moisture and savory flavor as it melts.
Water
Poured into the pan beneath the rack, it creates steam that helps keep the roasting pan from scorching.

The step that matters

Basting every 10 minutes. Regular basting spreads fat and juices over the skin and meat, promoting even browning and keeping the surface from drying out during the long roast.

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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