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Boiled Goose

A boiled goose prepared by soaking in milk, stuffing with onion and sage, then boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and sage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,628 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Singe the goose.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the goose and let it soak overnight.

  3. Remove the goose and dry it with a cloth.

  4. Stuff it with chopped onion and sage.

  5. Sew the goose up at the neck and vent.

  6. Hang it by the legs until the next day.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the goose in a pot of cold water and cover the pot.

  2. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with onion 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. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + sagetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together719 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
The main protein, which becomes tender and juicy with gentle cooking.
Milk
Soaking in boiling milk helps mellow the goose's flavor.
Onion
Stuffed inside the bird, it perfumes the meat with its aroma and flavor.
Sage
Stuffed inside the bird, it adds a savory, herbal aroma.

The step that matters

Boil gently. Vigorous boiling toughens meat proteins and can break up the skin and fat. A gentle simmer cooks the goose through while keeping it tender and intact.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion. 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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