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Roast Goose

A roast goose prepared with onions, sage, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Peel and slice the onions, place them in a bowl with salt, and pour boiling water over them. Let sit for 2 hours.

  2. Wash the onions in cold water and chop them finely.

  3. Mix the chopped onions with sage, salt, and black pepper.

Roast the goose

  1. Stuff the mixture into the goose and hang it to roast before a fire for 1 hour and 45 minutes, basting constantly.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pan, fry the sliced onion and gravy beef in dripping until browned, adding brown sugar while frying.

  2. Add water and bones to the pan and stew for 2.5 hours.

  3. Pour off the dripping and mix the goose drippings with the gravy, adding pepper, salt, and baked flour. Stir until smooth and strain.

Serve

  1. Serve the goose on a hot dish with some gravy poured over it, and the rest in a tureen.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 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
Is the main dish, and its fat and juices baste and flavour the meat as it roasts.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding moisture and flavour to the stuffing and gravy.
Dripping
Fat that browns the gravy beef and onion and carries flavour through the gravy.
Gravy beef
Browns in the fat and stews into the gravy, giving it body and meaty flavour.
Baked flour
Thickens the gravy as it is stirred in, giving it a smooth body.
Brown sugar
Caramelises while frying the onion and beef, adding sweetness and deeper browning.

The step that matters

Basting the goose constantly. Spooning fat over the bird as it roasts keeps the skin and surface from drying and helps it brown evenly, so the meat stays juicier.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, pepper, sugar, beef, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, pepper, sugar, beef, 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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