Skip to main content
Main

To Make a Goose Pie

A savory pie filled with goose, fowl, boiled tongue, and optional additional meats, encased in a butter and suet dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make a Goose Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the birds

  1. Split the goose down the back and remove the large bones.

  2. Season the goose with pepper and salt.

  3. Split the fowl the same way and remove the large bones.

  4. Insert the boiled tongue into the fowl and season it with pepper, salt, and mace.

  5. Place the fowl inside the goose and sew it up the back.

Make the paste

  1. For the paste, boil the flour, butter, and suet together to make a dough.

  2. Shape the dough into an oval pie and place the goose inside.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the corners with additional birds, veal, or pork if desired.

  2. Add 1 pound of butter inside the pie, cover with a lid, and seal with parchment to support the walls.

  3. Decorate the lid with leaves or other ornaments.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 4 hours.

  5. Melt 1.5 pounds of butter and pour it into the pie, letting it sit for 10 minutes before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the dough that becomes the sturdy, shaped walls of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavor through the dough and the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the paste tender and helps it hold its shape.
Goose
Forms the main meat filling, with its own fat enriching the pie as it cooks.
Fowl
Adds a second layer of meat inside the goose, filling the cavity with more flavor.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste walls before baking. The dough must be firm and intact to hold its oval shape and enclose the birds while they cook. A gap or weak wall lets juices and fat escape, leaving the filling dry and the pie misshapen.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, veal. 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.

More goose pie recipes

Green 11Christmas 9 See all 33 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes