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Goose a LA Mode

A goose served with a ragout of beef gravy, port wine, catsup, sweetbread, truffles, mushrooms, morels, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Goose a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Skin the goose.

  2. Bone the goose.

  3. Boil the tongue and fowl.

  4. Peel the tongue and fowl.

  5. Season the tongue, fowl, and goose with pepper, salt, and mace.

  6. Roll the tongue in the fowl.

  7. Place the tongue and fowl on the goose with slices of ham in between.

  8. Add beef marrow for improvement.

Stew

  1. Place everything in a stewpan with beef gravy, bones, sweet herbs, and onion.

  2. Cover the stewpan.

  3. Stew gently for 1 hour.

  4. Skim off fat from the gravy.

  5. Strain the gravy.

  6. Add port wine, catsup, sweetbread, truffles, mushrooms, morels, butter rolled in flour, pepper, and salt to the gravy.

  7. Stew the goose for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the goose with the ragout poured over it.

  2. Garnish with lemon.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and carries the flavour of the stewed meats.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat that enriches the gravy as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled with butter and stirred into the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the gravy, mellowing its texture.
Truffles
Contribute a deep, earthy aroma to the ragout.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Strain and skim the gravy before adding the ragout ingredients. Removing fat and solids leaves a clear, smooth gravy, so the added wine, mushrooms and thickened butter give a clean texture instead of a greasy or cloudy sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ham, beef, onion, port wine, truffle, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ham, beef, onion, port wine, truffle, mushroom. 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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