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Roast Goose

A whole goose stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, sage, pepper, salt, onion, baked and basted, served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, sage, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped onion.

  3. Stuff the goose lightly and stitch the openings securely.

  4. Place the goose in a baking pan with a little water.

Roast

  1. Baste frequently with saltwater (and vinegar if desired) while turning often for even browning.

  2. Bake for at least 2 hours, or until fully cooked.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the goose from the pan.

  2. Pour off the fat.

  3. Add the chopped giblets (previously stewed until tender) and the water they were boiled in to the remaining brown gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter rubbed together.

  5. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  6. Serve.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the main meat and fat that renders and browns during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb fat and juices in the stuffing, giving it a moist, soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that promotes browning and flavor in the stuffing and gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with butter, giving it body.

The step that matters

Bake for at least 2 hours, or until fully cooked. Goose has a thick layer of fat and dense meat, so it needs long, moderate heat to render fat and cook through. Basting and turning help the skin brown evenly while the fat drains away.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sage, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sage, pepper, flour. 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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