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Gans Pastete — Goose Pasty

A goose pasty made by simmering goose with herbs, chestnut paste, and bacon, then shaping into a savory dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Winter savory and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 221 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gans Pastete — Goose Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Pluck and singe the goose.

  2. Remove the legs and wings close to the body.

  3. Place the goose and giblets with the onion, cloves, savory, sage, and parsley tied together in a deep pot.

  4. Cover the pot with cold water.

  5. Close the lid.

Simmer

  1. Simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours over low heat.

  2. Season with salt and pepper halfway through cooking.

Make the chestnut paste

  1. Boil the chestnuts.

  2. Peel the chestnuts.

  3. Mash the chestnuts with a little butter, salt, and egg yolks to form a paste.

  4. Shape the chestnut mixture into egg-shaped balls.

Finish the filling

  1. Remove the goose from the pot.

  2. Slice the meat from the bones.

  3. Mince any remaining scraps with bacon, salt, pepper, herbs, and an egg to bind.

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. Winter savory + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together221 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Winter savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together863 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Winter savory + chestnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together690 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Goose
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly in water.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the minced filling, keeping it moist.
Egg yolks
Bind the mashed chestnuts into a smooth paste that holds its shape.
Chestnuts
Give the filling a soft, starchy body and a mildly sweet, nutty flavour.
Egg
Binds the minced goose scraps and bacon so the filling holds together.

The step that matters

Simmering the goose. Simmering gently over low heat in covered, barely moving water tenderises the meat without toughening it. Boiling hard would make the meat firm and dry, and the broth would turn cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, winter savory, sage, parsley, pepper, chestnut, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, winter savory, sage, parsley, pepper, chestnut, butter. 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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