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Green Goose Pie

A pie made from two young green geese, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, allspice, and butter, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Goose Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the geese

  1. Bone the geese and remove all plugs.

  2. Singe them nicely and wash them clean.

  3. Season the geese inside and out with salt, pepper, mace, and allspice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place one goose inside the other, pressing them close and drawing the legs inward.

  2. Cover the geese with a good amount of butter.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven with or without a crust, ensuring a cover fits tightly to keep in the steam.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young green geese
Provide the main meat, whose fat renders during baking to moisten and flavour the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the surface brown and keeps the meat moist.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat deeply and helps draw out moisture for better flavour.

The step that matters

Covering the geese tightly while baking. A tight-fitting cover traps steam so the meat cooks gently and stays moist; if steam escapes, the geese can dry out before they become tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, butter. 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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