Skip to main content
Main

Goose, Roast

Roasted goose with onion stuffing, basting in hot fat, served with beef stock or gravy and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Goose, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and truss the goose.

  2. Stuff the body with onion stuffing.

  3. Baste well with hot fat.

Roast

  1. Roast or bake for 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on size and age.

  2. Baste frequently.

  3. If the surface is not well browned, dredge with flour when the bird is three-quarters cooked.

Serve

  1. Remove the trussing string.

  2. Serve on a hot dish with gravy and apple sauce in sauceboats.

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

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

  2. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

  3. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Beef + appletop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,364 recipes

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

  5. Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Goose
Is the main dish; its fat renders during roasting and its meat cooks through over the long roast.
Onion stuffing
Fills the body of the bird, flavouring the meat and helping it hold its shape as it cooks.
Fat for basting
Moistens the skin during roasting and helps it crisp and brown.
Flour (in the method)
Dusted on the surface late in roasting to help the skin brown when it is pale.

The step that matters

Baste frequently. Regular basting keeps the skin moist and spreads fat over it, which encourages even browning and crispness during the long roast.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beef, sauce. 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 roasted goose recipes

with Apple Dressing 4with Apple Sauce 3with Sage and Onions 3 See all 130 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes