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Roast Wild Goose

A roasted wild goose stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, onion, apple, and sage, basted with butter and served with a glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Wild Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Remove the feathers from the goose.

  2. Singe the goose.

  3. Draw the goose.

  4. Wash the goose.

  5. Soak the goose in salted cold water for 30 minutes.

  6. Rinse the goose in cold water.

  7. Wipe the goose dry.

  8. Rub the inside of the goose with salt.

  9. Fill the goose with a mixture of bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, onion, apple, and sage.

  10. Sew up the opening of the goose.

Roast

  1. Place the goose on its back in a roasting pan with 1 cup of hot water and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Sprinkle the goose with salt.

  3. Place thin slices of fat salt pork on the breast of the goose.

  4. Baste the goose frequently during the first hour.

  5. Add water to the pan as needed while basting.

  6. Check for tenderness with a fork.

  7. Once done, place the goose on a hot platter.

  8. Garnish the goose with parsley.

Make the glaze and serve

  1. Drain the fat from the pan.

  2. Add 1 cup of hot water, a bit of butter, pepper, and salt to the glaze.

  3. Thicken the glaze with browned flour.

  4. Strain the glaze.

  5. Serve the glaze in a sauceboat.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild goose
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow roasting with basting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the juices and pan drippings inside the bird, giving the stuffing a moist texture.
Butter
Adds fat that moistens the meat during basting and promotes gentle browning.
Fat salt pork
Lays fat over the breast, basting the meat as it renders and keeping it moist.
Apple
Adds moisture and mild sweetness to the stuffing, balancing the rich meat.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the pan juices into a glaze and adds a toasted, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Basting the goose frequently during the first hour. Basting spreads hot fat and juices over the surface, which helps the skin brown and keeps the lean meat from drying out during early roasting.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, onion, sage, pork, parsley. 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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