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A French Stuffing for Roast Goose

A stuffing made with chestnuts, sausage meat, liver, herbs, and wine, used to fill and flavor a roast goose.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and chive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 51 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A French Stuffing for Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the goose

  1. Baste the goose with ½ cup cider at the start.

  2. When it warms, dredge with flour.

  3. Baste with its own fat and gravy mixed with cider.

  4. Roast the goose for at least 2 hours, basting frequently.

Make the stuffing

  1. Roast the chestnuts without burning, then peel them.

  2. Chop half the chestnuts and combine with sausage meat, butter, chopped liver, parsley, chives, shallots, and garlic in a pan.

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

  4. Stuff the goose with the mixture and stitch the belly flap closed.

Serve with chestnuts

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chestnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and rendered fat that bastes and flavours the bird.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a soft, mealy texture to the stuffing and the side dish.
Sausage meat
Adds fat, savoury richness and moisture to the stuffing.
Goose liver
Contributes a rich, creamy depth of flavour to the stuffing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma as the chestnuts simmer and reduce.

The step that matters

Stew the chestnuts until the liquid reduces and thickens. Simmering lets the starch in the chestnuts thicken the liquid as it reduces. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can make the chestnuts break down into a dry paste.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, flour, chestnut, meat, butter, liver, chive. 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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