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Roast Goose

Roast goose stuffed, trussed, and baked with salt pork, served with watercress and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Scrub the goose with hot soapy water, then draw, wash thoroughly in cold water, and wipe dry.

  2. Stuff the goose, truss it, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover the breast with strips of salt pork.

  3. Place the goose on a rack in a dripping pan and pour water into the pan underneath.

Roast

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 2.5 hours, basting every 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the pork during the last 30 minutes of cooking.

Serve

  1. Garnish with watercress and serve with apple sauce.

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. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Watercress + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together295 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Goose
Fatty meat that roasts into rich, tender flesh with crisp skin.
Salt pork
Its fat renders over the breast, keeping the meat moist and adding savory flavor.

The step that matters

Remove the pork during the last 30 minutes. Salt pork fat drips and renders onto the breast while it cooks. Taking the strips off near the end lets the skin brown and crisp directly in the oven heat, rather than staying soft under the pork.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, watercress, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, watercress, sauce. 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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