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Roast Goose

A whole goose roasted with salt, pepper, and stuffing, served with a gravy made from its drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the goose

  1. Clean and wash the goose as you would any fowl.

  2. Season the inside and outside with salt and pepper.

  3. Stuff the goose with good stuffing and sew it up.

Roast

  1. Place the goose in a dripping pan with 1 pint of water.

  2. Cover it with another dripping pan of the same size.

  3. Baste often and add more water as it cooks out.

  4. Bake until perfectly tender.

  5. Remove the cover and let it brown on top until nicely colored.

  6. Turn the goose to brown the other side.

  7. Transfer the goose to a hot platter and drain off the grease.

Make the gravy

  1. Place the dripping pan on the stove and add flour mixed with a little water.

  2. Stir constantly to avoid lumps and let it boil.

  3. Pour the gravy into a gravy boat and 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 rendered fat that bastes the bird and flavors the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into gravy as it boils.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown when brushed on.

The step that matters

Stir the gravy constantly while it boils. Flour mixed into hot liquid clumps easily if left still. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it thickens smoothly into a lump-free gravy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, potato, onion, butter, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, potato, onion, butter, raisin. 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.

More roast goose recipes

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