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Boiled Goose

A whole goose boiled with milk, bread crumbs, butter, onions, sage, and spices, served with giblet sauce, pickles, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the goose with boiling milk and leave it overnight.

  2. Wash off the milk in the morning.

  3. Place the goose in cold water on the fire.

  4. Once boiling hot, remove the goose.

  5. Wash the goose in warm water.

  6. Dry the goose with a cloth.

Stuff and boil

  1. Fill the body with a mixture of bread crumbs, pepper, salt, butter, chopped onions, and sage.

  2. Close the goose.

  3. Put the goose back in cold water.

  4. Boil gently until tender, about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with giblet sauce, pickles, or acid jellies, alongside beets, turnips, and cauliflower.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sage + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Goose
Provides the meat and fat that become tender during the long gentle boil.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the goose's juices and fat, giving the stuffing body and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Sage
Contributes a savory, herbal aroma that flavors the stuffing and meat.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. A gentle simmer cooks the goose evenly and keeps the meat tender. A hard, rapid boil can toughen the muscle fibers and break the skin, leaving the bird ragged and dry.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, pepper, butter, sage, sauce, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, pepper, butter, sage, sauce, turnip. 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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