Name: Roast Goose, to Carve
Ingredients: 1 young goose; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 2-3 ounces fresh butter; watercress; brown gravy; sorrel sauce; gooseberry sauce; tomato sauce

Why it works: Watercress and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Goose, to Carve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Truss the goose without stuffing it, seasoning the inside with salt and pepper.
Insert 2-3 ounces of fresh butter inside to moisten.

Roast and serve

Roast the goose over a clear, brisk fire for about 45 minutes.
Serve with watercress around it and accompany with brown gravy and your choice of sauce.
Cut the breast into long slices and remove the legs and wings as needed.

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.

Watercress + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sorrel + gooseberrytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together419 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

Young goose: Forms the main body of the dish, with its fat rendering during roasting.
Fresh butter: Adds moisture and richness inside the bird as it roasts.
Brown gravy: Adds savoury moisture to the sliced meat when served.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, watercress, sorrel, sauce, gooseberry):

Spinachfits better
Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, watercress, sorrel, sauce, gooseberry. 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.