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Boiled Goose

A goose boiled after soaking in milk, then stuffed with sage and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,628 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Singe the goose.

  2. Pour 1 quart of boiling milk over it.

  3. Let it soak in the milk overnight.

  4. Remove the goose.

  5. Dry it with a cloth.

  6. Stuff it with finely chopped sage and onion.

  7. Sew up the neck and vent.

  8. Hang it up until the next day.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the goose in cold water.

  2. Cover it.

  3. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  4. Serve with onion sauce.

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 + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + sagetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Goose
Is the main protein that is cooked whole and served as the centrepiece.
Boiling milk
Soaks into the goose, mellowing its flavour and helping keep the flesh tender.
Sage
Adds an aromatic herbal flavour that perfumes the meat from inside the cavity.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the stuffing and flavours the bird as it cooks.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the bird and draws out surface moisture when rubbed on the skin.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 1 hour. A rolling boil toughens and breaks up the meat and skin, so the water should only simmer. Keeping heat low lets the fat render slowly and the flesh cook evenly without becoming stringy.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion. 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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