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A French Stuffing for Roast Goose

A stuffing made with chestnuts, sausage, liver, herbs, and wine for roast goose.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

A French Stuffing for Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roast the chestnuts without burning them and peel carefully.

Make and stuff

  1. Chop half of the chestnuts and place them in a pan with sausage meat, butter, chopped liver, parsley, chives, shallots, and garlic.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat for 15 minutes.

  3. Stuff the goose with the mixture and stitch up the belly flap.

Make the chestnut garnish

  1. In another pan, combine the remaining chestnuts with white wine, stock, and salt.

  2. Stew the chestnuts until the liquid reduces and thickens, then serve around the roast goose.

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. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Chestnut + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chestnut + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 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

Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a mild sweetness to the stuffing and the stewed garnish.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury flavour that carries through the stuffing.
Goose liver
Adds richness and a deep, meaty flavour to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded richness to the stuffing mixture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps lift the flavour of the stewed chestnuts.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aromatic base to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stew the chestnuts until thickened. Reducing the wine and stock slowly lets the liquid thicken into a glossy sauce around the chestnuts. Too little reduction leaves them watery, and too much heat can scorch the sugars and starches in the liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, meat, butter, liver, parsley, chive, shallot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, meat, butter, liver, parsley, chive, shallot. 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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