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Boiled Goose

A whole goose boiled with milk, seasoned, and served with giblet sauce, pickles, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Dress the goose.

  2. Singe the goose.

  3. Place the goose in a deep dish.

  4. Cover the goose with boiling milk.

  5. Let it sit overnight.

  6. Wash off the milk from the goose.

Boil and stuff

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

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. Remove the goose from the boiling water.

  4. Wash the goose in warm water.

  5. Dry the goose with a cloth.

  6. Prepare a mixture of bread crumbs, pepper, salt, butter, chopped onions, and sage.

  7. Fill the body of the goose with the mixture.

  8. Close the goose.

  9. Put the goose back in cold water.

  10. Boil gently until tender, about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with giblet sauce.

  2. Serve with pickles or acid jellies.

  3. Serve 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. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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
Is the main protein, becoming tender and moist when gently simmered.
Milk
Soaked over the goose overnight to help mellow its flavour and whiten the skin.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the bread crumb stuffing, keeping it moist.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Form the bulk of the stuffing, soaking up fat and juices inside the bird.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. A rolling boil can toughen meat and split the skin, so keep the water at a gentle simmer while the goose cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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