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Goose À LA Mode

A stew of goose, tongue, fowl, ham, marrow, and herbs simmered in beef gravy with port wine, catsup, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 À LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Skin the goose.

  2. Bone the goose.

  3. Boil the tongue and fowl.

  4. Peel the boiled tongue and fowl.

  5. Season the tongue with pepper, salt, and mace and roll it around itself.

  6. Season the goose.

Assemble and stew

  1. Lay the fowl and tongue on the goose, placing slices of ham between them.

  2. Add beef marrow.

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

  4. Cover the stewpan and stew gently for 1 hour.

  5. Skim off the fat and strain the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Add port wine, catsup, sweetbread, truffles, mushrooms, morels, butter rolled in flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew the goose for another 30 minutes.

  3. Serve the goose with the ragout poured over it, garnished 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, supplying the bulk of the meat that is braised.
Beef gravy
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the meats and carries flavour through the stew.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the ragout, giving it body and a smooth, glossy texture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce, rounding out the savoury gravy.
Beef marrow
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Truffles
Contribute a strong earthy aroma that distinguishes the finished ragout.

The step that matters

Strain and skim the gravy before adding the finishing ingredients. Removing surface fat and solids leaves a clear, refined sauce; adding the flour-thickened butter to fatty, unstrained liquid would make it greasy and cloudy.

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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