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Roast Goose and Duck

A roasted goose or duck served with mashed potatoes, onion, butter, flour, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Goose and Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato and onion mash

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes and onion together until light and lump-free.

  2. Season the mash with salt, pepper, and butter.

Roast the bird

  1. Roast the goose or duck slowly for 2 hours, basting frequently.

  2. Half an hour before it is done, remove the bird from the oven.

  3. Rub the bird with butter and salt.

  4. Lightly dredge the bird with flour.

  5. Return the bird to the oven to brown without basting.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy as for turkey and hot roasted sour apples or acid jellies.

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

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Flour
Forms a light coating on the skin that helps it brown and crisp.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the skin brown.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour and moisture to the mash.
Fresh boiled potatoes
Provide the starchy body and smooth texture of the mash.

The step that matters

Return the bird to the oven to brown without basting. Basting during the final browning keeps the skin wet and pale, so it will not crisp. Leaving the surface alone lets dry heat brown the flour and fat into a crisp, golden skin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, butter, egg, 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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